


Torture Tuesday

by barbaricyawp



Series: Torture Tuesday [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-13
Updated: 2019-05-13
Packaged: 2020-03-01 13:30:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 49
Words: 28,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18801313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barbaricyawp/pseuds/barbaricyawp
Summary: An assemblage of heinous little drabbles written for Torture Tuesday on tumblr.





	1. Index

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a couple requests to post these on ao3, and while I'm hesitant to clog your feeds, I hope you can forgive me for wanting to archive these.
> 
> Most of the drabbles are here, in this massive upload. The drabbles that share a narrative thread have their own uploads under the same series.

## Index

##  [Torture Tuesday I](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184227701114/torture-tuesday)

[Crushing Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184228711169/ooh-i-like-this-ill-take-the-peter-9-please)

[Branding Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184230011094/7-with-buck)

[Exploiting Steve’s phobia + sleep deprived Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184250232444/1-with-steve-and-14-with-bucky-please)

[Sensory deprivation / overload for Eddie](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184250967059/5-13-with-eddie)

[Captain’s chair for Steve](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184254929634/8-for-steve)

[Bone breaking Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184258364449/i-know-its-not-tuesday-anymore-but-those-prompts)

[Bone breaking symbrock](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184273435584/any-chance-youd-do-bone-breaking-symbrock-even)

 

##  [Torture Tuesday II](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184390075644/yall-liked-it-last-week-lets-do-it-again-send)

[Collaring Eddie](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184391041419/3-for-eddie)

[Disfiguring Peter + symbrock](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184391843719/petereddievenom-for-8-love-your-writing)

[Haircut/shave for Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184392615159/bucky-6)

[Mobility restriction for Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184394229764/7-for-peter)

[Animal cage + forced nudity for Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184396484764/couls-you-do-1-and-5-for-bucky-please)

[Piercing Bucky 1](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184412921819/oh-its-pain-day-again-lets-do-9-with-whomever)

[Piercing Bucky 2](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184437155244/how-could-i-forget-this-is-an-extension-of-this)

[Force-feeding Drake (+ Riot](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184414804599/forced-feeding-for-drake-and-riot-this-one-is))

[Eddie begging for mercy](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184416950794/2-for-eddie-if-youre-not-sick-of-doing-eddie)

[Mobility restriction for Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184436495759/hey-i-really-like-your-tt-thing-and-i-was)

[Collaring and walling Tony](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184438073294/3-and-14-for-tony-stark)

 

##  [Torture Tuesday III](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184551343609/torture-tuesday-iii)

[Burying Tony alive](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184552309964/ive-been-waiting-all-week-for-this-8-for-stark)

[Caning Steve](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184553607549/steve-and-3-please)

[Caning + wooden horse for Winter Soldier](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184554283279/3-and-14-for-bucky-i-love-your-torture-tuesday)

[Caning + car batteries for Steve](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184555348379/how-the-hell-am-i-supposed-to-pick-between-caning)

[Carving + tattooing Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184557338714/oh-my-god-how-have-i-just-found-these-5-and-13)

[Burning Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184577391304/2-and-peter)

[Exploiting Bucky’s phobias](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184580208324/hi-can-i-request-number-10-for-bucky-please-and)

[Bone breaking Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184580782574/bone-breaking-peter-parker-please-3c)

[Fight to the death: Peter & Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184598384884/fight-to-the-death-between-bucky-and-peter)

[Burning Tony](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184599673539/tony-2-d)

[Wooden horse for Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184601395674/14-for-peter)

[Inverted hanging for Eddie (+ Spider-Man](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184603443069/alright-one-more-if-youve-got-the-time-6-for))

[Tattooing Eddie](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184612776884/with-the-tattoos-eddie-has-and-has-chosen-for)

[Cramped spaces + phobia for Tony & Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184613253824/910-like-claustrophobia-or-something-for-peter)

[Wooden horse for Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184614417364/14-and-bucky) (explicit)

[Car batteries + inverted hanging for Sam](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184622480814/4-and-6-for-klaus-from-the-umbrella-academy-or-if)

[Wooden horse for Steve](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184626394609/14-any-character)

[Wooden horse for Tony](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184628904189/can-ask-for-wooden-horse-for-any-marvel-character)

[Bonus: Force-feeding Winter Soldier](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184605909369/hey-for-the-next-torture-tuesday-since-we-missed)

##  [Torture Tuesday IV](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184713465174/torture-tuesday-iv) 

[Leashing Peter](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184714464744/9-and-peter-please)

[Razoring Bucky](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184715219519/bucky-for-7-pretty-please)

[Razoring Steve + needle//thread](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184715944149/its-my-favourite-day-of-the-week-torture)

[Steve and metal wires](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184716500854/steve-and-5)

[Tony in a car trunk + metal wires](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184717413014/aaah-tt-again-maybe-tony-car-trunk-andor)

[Bathing Bucky (in ice water)](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184718283229/bath-huh-lets-go-for-bucky)

[Peter and metal wires](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184718953364/hey-can-i-have-metal-wires-and-peter-please)

[Tony and lock//key (+ Peter)](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184720805849/hi-i-really-love-you-torture-tuesdays-can-i-get)

[Peter in a car trunk](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184736317979/can-you-do-peter-and-car-trunk-i-love-your)

[>> BONUS: Peter in a car trunk pt. 2](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184787735844/i-blame-my-love-of-whump-on-ryan-you-got-it)

[Bucky in lipstick + leash](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184736948879/tuesday-is-now-my-fav-day-of-the-week-because-of)

[>> BONUS: Winter Soldier in lipstick](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184784475779/bucky-and-lipstick-pretty-heh-please)

[Peter and hammer//nails](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184737955074/peter-and-3-pretty-please)

[Loki in a laundry dryer](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184738942434/4-for-loki-please)

[Bucky in a car trunk](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184739977589/i-was-super-excited-to-see-car-trunk-on-the-list)

[Eddie and lock//key (+ Venom)](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184741235564/eddie-lock-and-key)

[Peter and ropes + photograph](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184743441084/how-about-12-13-for-petey-owo)

>> [BONUS: Tony saves Peter from the ropes](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184767257594/oh-well-of-course-jumping-off-from-peter-on-the)

[Tony in a tank](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184761257999/can-you-do-14-for-tony)

[Bucky and photograph](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184762639044/could-you-do-the-12-for-bucky-please)s

[Leashing Wanda](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184764108174/if-youre-feeling-inspired-for-it-torture-tuesday)

[Photographing Loki](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184764624779/12-and-loki)

[Shooting Peter with a bow//arrow (+ Clint Barton)](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184765635139/ok-cant-help-it-im-interested-to-see-what-you)

[Bathing Loki (with scalding water) + ropes](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184783393289/1-and-13-for-loki)  


[BONUS: Sam and Bucky tied together](https://barb-aricyawp.tumblr.com/post/184766459424/for-my-darling-eagle-eyed-subverbaldreams-who)


	2. More Weight - Crushing Peter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is crushed by Kingpin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: crushing, asphyxiation

Kingpin presses his foot to the board pinned to Spider-Man’s chest. He’s already stacked several tons of rubble atop the board—the weight makes Peter feel pressurized, about to pop like a shook up can—but then Kingpin takes his foot and rests it on Peter’s chest.

He’s going to burst.

“Where are they?” Kingpin asks, digging his heel in. At the shift, a rock the size of Peter’s head rolls off the board and onto the ground.

No, not the ground. Onto Peter’s hand. He just didn’t feel it because his limbs have gone totally numb.

Peter squirms, presses his palms up against the board to give himself a moment of respite. But he’s been trying to leverage the weighted board off himself for hours now. His arms are weak. All of him is weak.

His biceps shudder, then his forearms crumple, and when the pressure returns in full force it is all the more immense. He is Atlas. He is Giles Corey.

Kingpin leans his full weight onto the board. He’s a big brute, even his foot is as heavy as a bowling ball. The full pressure of his weight is like being bombarded by bowling balls. One after the other, directly over his sternum.

Peter cries out, eyes watering. He shouldn’t have wasted his breath; once the air leaves his lungs, he doesn’t have the space to get it back. His lungs are like shriveled balloons and the board keeps them from inflating. He can’t breathe.

Peter can’t  _breathe_.

Kingpin eases up, just enough so that Peter can drag in a shallow breath. Just enough to skim some oxygen into his blood. Enough for him to answer the question:

“Where is Venom?”

Despite the burning in his lungs, the creaking of his breaking ribs, the bulge of his eyes under the rubble, Peter would rather die than give up Venom and Eddie. He gathers the pocket of air in his lungs and forces out,

“More weight.”


	3. Who You Belong To - Branding Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is branded by HYDRA. Requested by my darling thegoblinchild.

Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes has lost track of how long he’s been in Soviet capture, but every chance he gets, he makes an attempt to escape. And every now and then, he even manages to get outside of the facility.

Today, this attempt, he makes it ten yards outside before the Soviets haul him back in.

He fights them all the way out of his clothes. When a Soviet rips off his shirt, Bucky sinks his elbow into his groin. When they peel off his socks, Bucky kicks somebody square in the nose, and blood squelches between his bare toes.

Bucky knocks his head back, flails his limbs, goes limp, but it’s still not enough to fight them off. He didn’t expect it to be. Six or seven Soviets wrestle him into a chair and strap him there. Bucky thrashes against the bindings, and all the soldiers startle back—until they realize that he’s stuck there.

Chuckling, chatting in Russian, the Soviets approach the coal stove in the corner of Bucky’s cell.

Three iron rods protrude from the blaze. Bucky knows what they are: they’re brands.

“Choose me something pretty,” Bucky says when one of the Soviets lifts up a rod. The coals hiss and crackle when they shift into the space where the brand was.

It’s shaped like a hammer, the Soviet hammer. Bucky’s eyes skim over it, understanding dawning.

He’s talking a big talk, fighting a good fight, but there’s a tremor of fear under Bucky’s skin. Of dread. Officers in the army aren’t permitted body modifications like tattoos and brands.

Well, officers in the army typically have two arms. Bucky isn’t exactly cream of the crop these days.

“Now when you run,” a Soviet says in stilted English, “People know where to return you.”

“Who you belong to,” another adds.

They lift up Bucky’s leg by the ankle and the hot brand sinks into the ball of his foot. His skin sizzles, pops, and the smell of cooked meat fills the room. Hot waves of pain rocket up his legs and cramp his calves. The sensation is uncompromising, unyielding.

When they finish branding his foot, they drop his leg. At first the slap of concrete stings like sin. Then the coolness soothes the burn. Bucky takes a few deep breaths, tosses his head back to clear the hair from his eyes. He smiles.

“So, that was the hammer,” he says. “Where’s the sickle and star?”

The sickle is next, and for this one they turn over Bucky’s hand to expose his palm. This one is going to hurt like a son of a bitch, all those nasty nerve endings are there, and Bucky prepares himself for it.

_Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t **scream.**_

Bucky grits his teeth and forces himself not to make a single sound. Not a gasp, not a murmur. Nothing.

He’s silent.

When they pull the brand away, Bucky uncurls his fingers flat to observe their work. The shape of the sickle is a purpling red, the skin bubbling up. He closes his fingers around it.

He exhales. “Where’s the star going to go? My other foot? Don’t have another hand unless you want to give it back.”

Someone grips his head by the hair and forces it against the high back of the chair. Straps are wound around his forehead.

Oh, no. Oh, no, no,  _no_.

Bucky thrashes his head to the side and sinks his teeth into the forearm of a Soviet. It’s satisfying, the copper of fascist blood on his tongue, but ineffective. They just tighten the straps that bind his head in place.

Slowly, so he can watch it approach, the Soviets sink the brand into his forehead, right in the center.

Oh, and the  _pain_.

They bring him a mirror once they’re done. Bucky’s breath quickens at its approach, more afraid of it than the brands; he hasn’t seen himself since before the fall. Wincing, Bucky first absorbs his limp and matted hair, the gaunt shadows of his cheekbones. His eyes deep in their sockets. 

Then, quivering all over, Bucky lifts his eyes to his forehead.

The brand. The star is hung low over his brow, ugly and already swelling with pus. When the swelling subsides, it will be a star the size of his iris. There will be no covering the mark with a hat or hair. Unless it heals, his forehead will bear a red, Soviet star for all to see.

Bucky’s always been proud of being handsome. He’s not so handsome now, is he?

Though he won’t remember this moment after they turn on the electricity in the chair, though the brand will heal, Bucky won’t run away again. Not ever.


	4. That's Our Steve - Steve/Phobias + Bucky/Sleep Deprivation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve's fears are exploited. Bucky is sleep deprived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: nonconsensual drug use, hallucinogenics, waterboarding, drowning, body horror, and sleep deprivation.

**1\. Exploitation of phobias. Steve.**

Steve is well known for being unafraid. He’s not scared, not ever, not of anything. 

But he does have one, great phobia. And HYDRA somehow knows it.

First, they dope him up on drugs. A chemical cocktail that has reality spinning out wildly away from him. One moment Steve is fighting tooth and nail to avoid being strapped to the operating table, the next he’s floating.

High. He’s high up. He stares up at the blue sky. Blinks.

Someone is looking at him. Two blue eyes. They blink at him, and then the rest of his face appears. Steve blinks that face into slow focus.

Bucky. It’s Bucky. Thank God.

Bucky smiles at him, brilliant and confident, but the smile doesn’t stop. It keeps growing, bigger and bigger until his jaw hangs open off its hinges. Water pours from his mouth. Gallons and gallons of water. His face is swollen, bloated and missing chunks of skin like a drowned man.

A drowned man. A dead man. This isn’t real.

When he blinks again, waterlogged Bucky is no longer in the room. But he still  _feels_ there. Steve’s heart is a wild creature, frantic with panic. He was just here, he was just here.

Steve jerks his head up to the HYDRA agent monitoring him. “What the hell was that?”

“Just the beginning,” the agent says.

 

—-

 

Steve has another fear too, this one a well kept secret: he’s afraid of suffocating. Has been since he was a little boy.

It’s the asthma. Of all his myriad ailments, Steve hated his asthma the most. He knows what it’s like to have no air in his lungs, no oxygen in his brain. He knows the panic that air may never come again. Steve knows.

And so does HYDRA.

They tie a sack around his head. Burlap. Coarse and thick. Difficult enough to breathe through dry. When it’s wet it’ll be… Steve takes a deep breath, knowing that it will be a while before he gets another.

They dump water over his face. It gets into his nose, trickles up his sinuses. The first spluttering attempt at inhalation isn’t so bad; he almost gets half a lungful. But the third and fourth feel shallower. Within minutes, hypoxia settles in. He spasms.

But he doesn’t pass out. Even when they pour more water, ice cold water, and the room drops away, Steve doesn’t pass out.

 

—-

 

He has another hallucination. A memory this time. He’s crashed into the ice, but there’s water underneath. Steve escapes the ship, but when he swims up with the bubbles, there is a solid ceiling of ice. So thick and hard that not even his super strength can burst through. 

Frantic, running out of oxygen, Steve searches for the entry point. The ship had to crash somewhere. There has to be a gap in the ice.

This is where the memory splits off into hallucination. He finds the crash site, where the ice cracked open. And Bucky waits for him on the edge. Oh thank God. He can help haul Steve out of the water.

For a moment, just a moment, Steve has Bucky’s hand in his. He can breathe.

But Bucky’s hand slips. Just slides right out of Steve’s grip. 

“You dropped me,” he says and places his palms atop Steve’s head. Almost like a benediction. “You dropped me.”

He pushes Steve down and holds him under.

 

—-

 

When Steve surfaces from the hallucination, he’s still coughing up water. He doesn’t beg for it to stop, he just lies immobile on the operating table. Shivering and gasping, though his lungs are full and his body is dry.

Then they pull the hood down again. There is more water.

 

—-  
—-

 

**14\. Sleep deprivation. Bucky.**

Things start getting weird after three days of lack of sleep. That’s when the hallucinations start up. 

After four days, his body temperature plummets and he shivers all over. 

After five days, he is all but lost to the world, adrift in his own mind. His body is just a cramping, throbbing afterthought. The whole physical world is an afterthought.

For five days, the asset has been tied with his arm above his head and his calf strapped to his thigh so that he must balance on one foot. Right arm up, left leg up–the position doesn’t allow him to slacken to the side or droop. 

For the first day, he was able to stand upright and solid. 

By the second day, he was forced to wobble back and forth to maintain balance. 

By the third day, none of it mattered.

The stress position serves its purpose; he’s awake. He’s still awake. Oh God help him, he’s still awake.

The asset is awake when they bring the man in. If they really do bring a man in.

Just moments ago, the asset was having vivid hallucinations about technicolor lightening jagging through the room. Through him. 

Before that, the walls were bleeding. 

Before that, there is an American sergeant standing in the corner. The figure lounges against the side of the wall as if he owns it, tips his hat at the asset. And then the sergeant is gone again. Who is he? The asset’s addled brain can’t keep up.

Sleep deprivation is strange like that.

And now there’s another man. Not a sergeant, but a prisoner bound up and flanked by agents. He’s wearing a wet burlap hood. His breathing is shocky and aborted. The asset’s stomach clenches with empathy. He knows how much it hurts.

_I know, buddy. If asthma had an ass, I’d kick it._

They rip the bag off his head, and recognition prickles through the asset at the sight of the man’s face. 

_Steve_ , his delirious mind supplies.  _That’s our Steve._

The asset smiles, big and dopey at the sight of him. For a moment, it looks like the man, Steve, is smiling too, but then the asset blinks and Steve’s face is pulled down into an open-mouthed mask of horror.

“Is that Bucky?”

_Buck, is that you? Quit fooling around._

And Steve, his face seems to be melting. Or maybe he’s just upset. He certainly sounds upset. His voice a deep, wavering tenor. Wet. The man sounds wet.

“That’s Bucky,” Steve says with his wet voice. “You have him? But how, but why, but…”

It hurts the asset to see Steve like that. An actual tightness in his temples.

“It’s okay,” the asset says, though talking isn’t allowed. “You’re okay, pal.”

The asset is struck over the face for speaking out of turn. It doesn’t hurt—his body is all hurt now, hard to distinguish the hurts from each other—but the slap  _is_  inconvenient. Irritating even. 

His head is already dizzy and the impact seems to knock it loose. The room launches into a spin. He loses time, not quite asleep, but blanked out.

_God, if spins aren’t the fucking worst. Don’t let me drink again, Stevie._

When the asset rights his head and the room settles into place, the bag is back around Steve’s head. No more face.   
  
Water stands in a pool around Steve’s feet. His head is soaked, his breathing labored; wet burlap clings to his open mouth. He’s sucking all his air through the water.

The asset is cut down and the blood rushing to his foot and hand makes his whole body tingle. He stumbles.

There’s a bucket of water in his hand. How did that get there?

“Last mission before cryo,” the asset’s handler says. It’s a promise.

Cryo. The asset glances to the corner where the hallucination of the sergeant is staring at him. Disapproval haunts his face, and he shakes his head once. 

The asset looks away. Cryo means sleep. After this, the asset can sleep. It could weep for want of sleep.

“Mission report?” the asset recites, but that isn’t the right phrase. “Status update,” he tries again. Wrong again. He’s confused. His head pounds. His tongue is unwieldy and swollen. Lightening flickers through the room.

_What do ya want from me?_

“What do you want from me?”

The handler slaps the asset again. “Pour the water on the man’s head.”

The asset blinks down at the bucket. Its surface is smooth and black, like a mirror. When he peers down into it, the asset can see the sergeant in there. Huh.

“Pour the water…” he repeats and drags a foot forward.

The man, Steve, tenses, fists flexing. Bracing himself. For some reason, this posture triggers a flash of memory. 

_You’re braced for a fight you can’t win.  
At least I’m fighting._

“I’m sorry,” the asset says to his handler, “I don’t understand.”

His handler sighs, grabs the rim of the bucket and pulls it towards the man. The asset stumbles along after it, stupid and uncoordinated.

“Pour the water,” the handler says with patronizing slowness. “On the man’s head.”

Right. Right. Pour the water. “On Steve.”

The room seems to expand and then shrink, like the snap of a rubber band.

At the sound of his name, Steve’s head jerks up under the bag. The asset looks to his handler, who stares back at him with something like fear. 

But why would his handler be afraid of him? All he has is water. He looks down into the bucket, into his reflection again. He sees the sergeant. He sees Bucky.

Oh. There’s a person in there. In here. In himself. He was a person once.

The asset hasn’t slept in a long time. His brow crumples, confused. “Is this…is this real?”

Steve is torquing his body back and forth now, trying to pry himself lose. The handler is retreating, paging in for backup.

Bucky drops the bucket. Water splashes over his bare feet, shocks his senses. For a moment, there’s startling clarity. As if he’s only just now woken up.

He reaches over and pulls the bag off of his head, off of Steve.

_Well, huh. Thought this guy was smaller._

Somewhere between himself and the asset, Bucky’s eyes slide over to his handler. For the first time, suspicion races through him. He doesn’t really know this guy.

But he knows Steve. Doesn’t know much about him, but he trusts his best interests are in that man’s heart. All the best things are in Steve Roger’s heart.

Bucky sets him loose.

 


	5. Captain's Chair - Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumlow forces Steve into a jetliner position. In return, Bucky gets to drink water.

“Only ten more minutes, Cap,” Rumlow says, checking his watch. “How long has that been, Soldier?”

“Two hours and twenty minutes, sir,” the Soldier responds in a flat monotone.

No, not the Soldier…Bucky.

Steve has been forced into a stress position referred to as the jetliner position, or—as Rumlow suggested with a snide grin— _the captain’s chair_.

He remembers reading about it. The recipient of this punishment is made to put their back against the wall and bend their legs until their thighs are parallel to the ground. Essentially like sitting in an invisible chair.

Steve’s been sitting in that chair for two hours and twenty minutes.

His left thigh convulses, his knees wobble. Rumlow arches a brow, watching as the quake of Steve’s thighs compromises the integrity of his whole body. His hips quiver. His back tries to curl off the pole, restricted only by sheer force of will.

Steve keeps his chin up and his eyes sharp on Bucky. It takes his mind out of his body.

Bucky’s eyes are less resolute. Sometimes he looks at Steve, sometimes his attention wanders to the bottle of water in Rumlow’s hand.

A few more minutes in this position, and Bucky gets the water.

Steve grits his teeth. His ankles are jelly, his knees are gone. This is a kind of war against his body he’s used to battling; the kind of war he knows he can lose.

So, when Rumlow orders Bucky to “Put your hand—the metal hand—on his head,” tears prick Steve’s eyes. He’s barely hanging in there.

The weight of that metal hand is like lead over Steve’s skull. His ankles lock. He grips his fists atop his trembling thighs and huffs. He can do this. Has to. Bucky hasn’t drank or eaten in three days.  
  
“Stack on your other hand,” Rumlow commands, and Bucky obeys. “Push down.”

Bucky obeys again.

Steve’s chest is heaving now, but he nudges his forehead up into Bucky’s palm. Somehow, he’s grateful for the touch. 

The fingers there twitch. He lifts his watering eyes to Bucky’s and finds a glimmer of sympathy behind the blank glaze.

“Three more minutes,” Rumlow chirps. “Count us down when we’re at ten seconds, Soldier.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky says, eyes still on Steve.

For a long time, there is silence. Steve’s lungs burn, his whole body is an earthquake. 

Bucky gives no indication that they’re approaching the final ten seconds until he’s abruptly announcing the countdown: “Ten,” he says, that flat monotone again. His eyes flicker between Steve and the water. 

“Nine…”

On eight, Rumlow flicks out his police baton. On seven, Steve closes his eyes. On six, he braces himself. On five, Rumlow strikes his jaw. On four, Rumlow strikes his chest. On three, Rumlow strikes his thigh. On two, Steve wavers, but catches himself.

On one, Bucky’s thumb shifts against Steve’s temple: a singular, thankful circle.

Steve collapses, and Rumlow tosses the plastic water bottle to Bucky. Bucky opens it, but doesn’t drink until he’s given permission.

The fire in Steve’s body is extinguished by the sight of Bucky’s throat bobbing over great swallows of water. When he crunches the empty bottle into a ball, Steve closes his eyes. Victorious.


	6. Bone Breaking Buck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve comes across doctor's notes detailing Bucky's broken bones. Requested by the wondrous straight-to-the-pain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: incredibly graphic torture, medical horror, burning, predicament bondage

Steve finds it in a bunker full of boxes. Most of the boxes contain bogus documents—dummy certificates and forged identifications–all to maintain the Winter Soldier operation.

But then he finds a stack of pocket-sized composition notebooks. Each neatly dated and organized chronologically. Curious, Steve flips open one marked  ** _JAN. 1977 - BONE FRACTURES:_**

##  **CLASSIFIED**

FIELD NOTES ON [redacted] AKA WINTER SOLDIER  
[subsection: bone fractures]

**Jan. 2nd:**  Spiral fracture involving left femur and left tibia. W.S. (Winter Soldier) was cuffed to a furnace grate by the ankle. W.S. injured himself attempting to move from heat. 

Oblique fracture in right tibia from Dec. 26th is fully healed. No sensitivity reported.  
  
Scaphoid fractures in several metacarpals from where wrist was bound to  ~~its~~  his prosthetic (again, self-inflicted), and in metatarsals from impact onto grate (W.S. was abruptly cut down from wrists). 

—

They clip his ankle to the grate of a vent, and the warm metal digs into the meat of his feet. It’s not so bad at first, just mildly uncomfortable. But he knows that his real punishment will begin soon.

His right leg still twinges from where they broke it last week.

A fan turns on below him, hot air rushes through the grate. The asset sags against the binds that hold his arms above his head. After the cold of the cell, all that heat is nice.

And then it isn’t.

The bottoms of his feet burn, but when he tries to jerk his legs up, he remembers that his ankle is cuffed to the grate. He’s only able to curl one knee up to his chest, the other stays below and suffers the additional pressure.

The tendons in his feet grind together as he attempts to work against the metal cuffs. The metal cuffs–these too are heating against his skin, burning. His arm is burning too, the metal prosthetic one. The seam along his shoulder singes.

The asset twists, writhes. Every now and then, he touches his right foot down to the grate again, just to ease the weight on his burning foot, but he can only keep it down for a moment.

He feels as if he’s betraying his own leg.

The doctors take notes. Then, they turn the heat up. All at once. They might as well have set a fire beneath him and burned him like a witch.

The asset torques his knees to the left and there’s a wretched noise. A loud snap from his leg, and then another one. The asset knows that snap. The way it pops open hollow, like twisting open a bottle. He’s broken his leg in two places.

Still, the doctors increase the heat.

Standing on the broken bones is unfathomable. The asset holds his own hand, electric shocked by his own nerve endings scraping against the fractured bone of his tibia. There’s a crackle in his flesh hand when the prosthetic presses down too hard. 

And now the pressure of his body sags onto his broken wrist.

The asset gives a full bodied thrash, but there’s nothing left in him. He dangles until they cut him down. When they do, the tops of his feet hit the grate and his whole body collapses on top of it.

—

Steve closes the book with a lurch in his stomach. He settles it back into the box, nestled between  ** _DEC. 1976 - BONE FRACTURES_**  and  ** _FEB. 1977 - BONE FRACTURES._**

He’ll carry the box out to the van, but he won’t tell anybody what’s inside. Not Sam. Not Nat.


	7. That's Not Good - Bone Breaking Symbrock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Venom is subdued, doctors break Eddie's bones to test their recovery time. Requested by my babe, 3-thousand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: torture, hand torture, begging, medical horror

In order to make this experiment possible, they use an EMP generator to alter Venom. Eddie can feel its thoughts slow to a thick, lazy syrup in his veins.

_Stay with me, buddy,_  he thinks to it as they strap him to the table.  _Stay with me._

_I’m always right here,_  Venom says, curling up inside Eddie like a dozing cat. Whatever they did to it, it’s totally complacent now. 

Despite the hammering of Eddie’s heart and the frantic flicker of his eyeballs–Venom doesn’t care. It can’t care. It’s not allowed to.

They start with the fingers.

A lab tech applies a clamp to the second knuckle of Eddie’s pinky. They increase pressure on his knuckle until it snaps, until it crushes. It’s a startling pain, one that pricks tears under Eddie’s eyelashes.

“Compression fracture in fifth metacarpal,” the lab tech announces to the room. “Time: 07:08 hours.”

Venom doesn’t seem to notice. Minutes trickle past and then they release the clamp on his pinky and reapply it to his ring finger. 

_Do you think I could eat your appendix sometime?_ Venom wonders, it feels far away from Eddie. It’s delirious.  _Just a nibble. It smells so good. You smell so good._

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head. “Yeah,” he says aloud. “I don’t need it anyway.”

Rather than crushing his ring finger, they use the clamp to savagely jerk it backwards, away from his palm. Eddie cries out in shock at the snap of bone. His hand trembles uncontrollably, rattling the break.

_Hm,_ Venom thinks,  _That’s not good._ Slowly, slowly, it begins to right the crumpled finger back into place. The pain eases, and Eddie is grateful, but Venom can usually fix a broken finger within seconds. Today is not usual.

“Three minutes to heal the greenstick fracture in fourth metacarpal,” the lab tech notes. “Let’s try the radial fracture next.”

Eddie’s arm is taken into two latex-gloved hands. He looks up at the face of the man who holds his arm: protective glasses, surgical mask. Gray hair. Does this man have a family?

“Please,” Eddie says. “Don’t.”

The lab tech twists his arm clockwise, stabilizing his forearm and wrenching his wrist until it breaks. Sweat breaks out on Eddie’s forehead, and he kicks his legs against the cuffs that bind him to the table.

Somebody whistles, “Nice job, Carl. Gorgeous spiral radial fracture in left arm. Time: 07:28 hours.”

Venom roils inside Eddie, confused.  _What was that? Are you okay?_

“My wrist,” Eddie explains. “They broke my wrist.”

“Increased activity from the symbiote,” someone announces on the intercom. All lab techs take a synchronized step back. “Stand by.”

_I can’t feel it, which wrist?_ Venom explores Eddie’s right wrist, finds it in tact, and then searches his left.  _These fuckers,_ it thinks when it finds the break.

Eddie can feel Venom’s rage, like the ozone of a distant thunder storm, but it still can’t manage to heal him at its regular pace. Usually, the healing process burns like a son of a bitch, but it’s over quickly.

Now it’s prolonged. He can feel the raw nerves fuse together, the bones merge, the swelling forcibly abated. 

Healing is a torture of its own.

“Twenty minutes to heal the spiral radial fracture in left arm,” a tech announces after a stretch. Everyone hesitates. Then, he continues, “Proceeding to oblique fracture in right arm.”

They break his right arm with a claw hammer. His arm folds, almost coquettish in its angle away from his body. It doesn’t hurt right away. But when Eddie glances down at it, he feels a rush of heat and cold and  _pain_. The bone juts from his skin.

_Venom._ He seeks it out desperately now, not looking for repair, but for comfort.  _Venom, you gotta help me. Please._

_I’m right here,_ Venom responds, but it isn’t. Eddie is alone in this.

They break his ankle– _compression fracture to left metatarsals_ –and his shin– _oblique fracture to right tibia_. 

Venom heals these at a glacial pace and Eddie would beg it to stop helping, but he’s afraid if it stops healing him, it won’t be present at all. He’d rather suffer the unique torment of feeling his bones bind back together than lose Venom altogether.

It’s the break to his femur that does it. They break it once with that damned claw hammer, a few inches below the hip, then again a few inches above the knee. 

Eddie can feel a fragment of bone free-floating in his thigh as they announce, “Segmented fracture to the femur.”

Eddie’s whole leg is a white-hot rod of agony. He feels weak, trembling all over, about the tremble out of his skin.

“Let’s see the parasite fix this one.”

_Parasite?_ Venom rises, a physical pressure towards Eddie’s skin. The floating bone segment drifts into place.  _Did they just call me a parasite?_

Sweating, crying, half-mad, Eddie grins at the circle of lab techs. “I think they did, buddy.”

_I’m not a parasite,_ it says. And finally, finally Venom surfaces.


	8. Like a Dog - Collaring Eddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlton Drake collars Eddie.

“If you’re going to act like a bitch,” Drake says, wrestling Eddie to the floor by his head. “Then we’re going to treat you like a bitch.”

A collar–metal, cold,  _heavy_ –snaps around Eddie’s neck. He reaches back to shove Drake off of him, but his hands are smacked away. Drake threads a chain through the D-ring at the back of the collar. By this chain, he hauls Eddie deeper into the cell.

As he’s dragged back, Eddie stumbles off his feet and–much as he tries–can’t struggle back upright. His feet slip and skitter out from below him. He’s towed by the throat to the wall where Drake bolts the chain into the cement.

If Venom were still inside of Eddie, they could rip this collar clean off. If Drake wasn’t bonded with Riot, Eddie would never have been forced into a collar.

Like a dog.

Eddie stands up like a man.

The collar is fitted for someone smaller than him–maybe an actual fucking dog. Eddie has a pretty thick neck. He digs his fingers in under the band of the collar, trying to make some room for himself, but the metal is unyielding.

When Eddie swallows, the bulge of his adam’s apple grinds against the collar.

“This is a great scoop,” Eddie rasps through his bruised trachea. “CEO of the Life Foundation: Fetish Freak. What do you think? Too much alliteration?”

Drake frowns. He wraps the chain around his hand once. “Sounds a little tabloid-y for you.”

Eddie shrugs. “I like to experiment with genre,” he says.

Or he would say, if Drake didn’t cut him off mid-sentence with a sharp yank to the chain.

Eddie topples headfirst to the concrete floor. When he lifts his head, he spits out blood and one of his front teeth. He was aiming for Drake’s leather shoes, but falls an inch short.

Eddie doesn’t stand back up.

“Good boy,” Drake says when it looks like Eddie is going to stay down for a while. “I’ll come back for you in the morning.”

On Drake’s way out, Eddie hacks a glob of blood and phlegm. It strikes the heel of his shoe–a viscous red against the cognac patent leather.

Drake doesn’t notice.

Eddie smiles. He tries to make himself comfortable despite the chill of the floor and the pressure on his throat. He’s going to be here for a long time.


	9. Disfiguring Peter (+Symbrock)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is disfigured while Eddie and Venom watch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: starvation, body horror, mutilation, begging, implied eye horror

They keep them in separate cells. And that, in itself, is a torture beyond compare for Eddie. 

It’s torture for Eddie and Venom to be so close to Peter, to see him through the double glass panes, and not be able to  _touch him._

Hold him. Comfort him.

Eddie leans up against the glass that divides their cells. Peter does the same on his side and, at the very least, they can feel the warmth of each other seep through the glass.

Eyes closed, Eddie clutches his stomach. They haven’t been fed in nearly five days, and Venom has resorted to eating segments of his nonessential organs. Starting with the appendix, moving onto his kidney.

Eddie would be relieved that at least Peter’s being fed regularly, but he suspects that it isn’t a mercy at all but a trick. 

He turns out to be right.

A doctor comes down the hall, carrying a briefcase, and she enters Peter’s cell. Peter swivels his head towards her, smiles.

“Aw, no need for presents” he quips, eyeing the briefcase. “You already got me these.”

Peter lifts his hands to show her his magnetic cuffs. In their cell, Eddie and Venom wear a matching set.

“Oh,” she says crisply. “I’m aware of those.”

She activates them, and Peter’s wrists and are instantly bound to the floor. He doesn’t even try to defy them, just sags into their hold. Broken. They’ve broken a part of Peter.

_We’ll suck her spinal column out through her throat,_ Venom thinks darkly. Eddie could go for a spinal column right now, especially hers.

As if sensing the hungry tenor of their thoughts, the doctor turns her attention to Eddie and Venom through the glass.

“Been a while since you ate, huh?” she says. “At the accelerated rate your metabolism moves, I imagine you’re starving.”

She settles her briefcase on the floor next to Peter. He gives a full body shudder, some fear leaking through his goose-bumped skin and expanding pupils.

“Tell me, Venom,” she continues. “Would you eat a human nose?”

Eddie begs it not to answer her. It doesn’t listen.

_Too much cartilage,_ Venom growls through Eddie.  _Now a whole head…_

“Hm.” The doctor unclasps the briefcase and opens it. 

From Eddie’s angle, he can’t see what’s inside, but Peter can. His eyes widen, darting up to Eddie’s face. Searching for help. 

“What about ears?” the doctor says, looking down into the briefcase.

_Venom, don’t,_ Eddie thinks, fixated on those panicked eyes.

_Ears, I suppose. But we’d have to spit out your earrings._

The doctor touches the dangling hoops from her ears, and chuckles. “That’s good to know,” she says.

She snaps on latex gloves and lets the briefcase fall open into view. Peter’s horror is explained by a line of polished scalpels. Sharp and glimmering. Eddie’s heart drops through to his stomach.

_Oh, no, no. Not Peter. Not Peter, no._

The doctor selects the smallest scalpel, no bigger than an X-acto knife, and takes Peter’s ear by the shell. She stretches it away from his head, even as he tries to pull away to fight her.  
  
“Please don’t,” Peter whimpers. His voice is small and high, wavering on his tightest vocal cords. “Please, please, I don’t want to, please–”

She carves the knife through his ear, starting at the lobe. It’s in one, quick stroke, and then she’s wielding it for Eddie to see.

Or for Venom to see.

“Would you eat this?”

Venom is gobsmacked. Then it is outraged. It consumes Eddie and hurls their body against the glass, snarling and threatening. 

“I’ll take that as a ‘no thank you,’” the doctor says. 

She drives her knife through his other ear and this cut is less surgical, less precise. She leaves a chunk of cartilage in tact, and the severed ear is jagged, almost torn from Peter’s head.

“What about this ear? No? Neither?”

Venom strikes the glass with both fists, nearly hard enough to crack it. But then the doctor is holding the blood-slicked scalpel just above Peter’s brow.

Peter, who was squirming and crying out in pain before, goes stock still. Even his breathing slows. Both his eyes are focused on the blade hovering over his brow. His eyes are almost crossed, and his entire body trembles with terror.

“Would you eat this?” the doctor says, turning the blade towards Peter’s quivering eyeball.

All at once, Venom retreats back inside Eddie, leaving him standing before the glass. Shell-shocked. 

Eddie shakes his head once. He looks to the ear–Peter’s ears, as small and delicate as seashells–still pinched between her fingers.

“No, thank you,” he says. “We’re not hungry.”


	10. Two Pence - Shaving/Haircutting Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A HYDRA agent shaves and cuts Bucky's hair. Requested by thegoblinchild, whom I adore.

The worst torture isn’t the physical pain, not the beatings or the starvation or even the drugs they use to keep him compliant. The worst torture is how they’ve let him go to  _waste._

Bucky Barnes was always a handsome man. Well-groomed and fastidious about his hygiene. But he’s been in HYDRA captivity for months, maybe even a year now, and all the while he’s been kept in squalor.

They won’t allow him to bathe, or shave, or even comb back his hair which has grown in a wild tangle past his jaw.  
  
So, when they send an agent into his cell with a hose and a scrub brush, Bucky is grateful. Grateful despite the freeze of water and burn of lye. By the end of it, his teeth are chattering and his skin is a raw pink, but he can no longer smell himself.

It’s an improvement.  
  
“See?” the agent says, lifting a mirror to Bucky’s clean face. “It’s not so bad. HYDRA takes good care of its things.”  
  
His hand is shaking, but Bucky still manages to tilt the mirror at the right angle to see himself. The agent is right; his reflection isn’t so bad. He’s a little gaunt. The scruff at his throat is more ragged than handsome. But his long hair falls in soft waves around his face. For a moment, he’s almost pretty.

“Enough of that,” the agent snaps, clapping the back of Bucky’s head. He looks Bucky over, expression dark. An expression like that is never a good sign. “You’re a vain one, aren’t you? Well, you just keep admiring yourself in that mirror then.”

A few months ago, Bucky might have defied this order just for the hell of it. But fear locks his wrist in place. He keeps the mirror facing him, wincing all the while.

The agent threads his fingers through Bucky’s clean hair. The gesture is almost affectionate, until he wrenches Bucky’s head back and pulls out his switchblade. It’s rusting near the handle. So much for HYDRA taking care of its things.

Bucky swallows, once. A bob of his adam’s apple under the shadow of scruff.

“You were a sergeant, weren’t you?” the agent says. “Can’t be an officer unless you’re clean shaven.” 

He angles the blade under Bucky’s jaw and scrapes off the hair there in one rough stroke. Bucky winces, but keeps his eyes glued on the mirror. With each dry drag of the knife, blood wells. It’s not sharp enough, and Bucky’s hair is too coarse for a shave without nicks.

When the agent finally finishes with his face, Bucky’s jaw is a patchwork of bare skin, missed beard, and blood smudges.

But the agent isn’t done yet.

“All this hair makes you look like a woman,” he comments and clenches his fist until he’s pulling Bucky’s hair at the roots. “Let’s fix that.”

“Wait,” Bucky coughs. “No, wait–”

The knife is too blunt to make it through Bucky’s thick hair in one pass. So the agent has to saw at it in uneven chunks. He seizes up fistfuls at a time, chopping off Bucky’s hair as close to the scalp as he can get.

And Bucky watches in the mirror as clean waves of hair fall to the floor. He watches as the agent scrapes his head bald. Until all that’s left of Bucky’s hair is an ugly uneven shadow over his skull.

He can’t explain why the sight of himself–bare and exposed–brings tears to his eyes. Maybe he’s just that vain.


	11. Mobility Restricting Peter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is bound up in his own spider webs. He tries to eat.

In Peter’s book, there’s only a few things worse than being totally immobilized by bondage.

And that’s being bound by his own spider webs.

First, they take his webshooters. They extract the web fluid from them to devise their own bonds for Peter: thick, sticky ropes that even Spider-Man can’t break through.

Then they get him onto his knees, fighting all the while because it’s never  _ever_ good when a group of people try to get a superhero onto his knees. He’s still trying to throw a hand off of him when they wind Peter’s own webbing around his shins and quads, binding his legs into a bent position.

When Peter tries to spring up onto his feet, he plummets to the floor; his feet are bound flat to his buttocks. 

Everyone in the room gives a chuckle except for Peter. Peter, whose face heats as his embarrassment swells hot inside him.  
  
As if that wasn’t enough, they then wrangle his wrists to his ankles and fix them there so that even reaching his arm up becomes a whole body struggle.

And then they just leave him there. Food and water on a table within reach. Just not easy reach.

“Okay,” he says to himself, thinking this through. “I can do this. I just need to…”  
  
It’s slow going, but Peter manages to hobble-walk on his knees, occasionally bracing his fingertips against the floor for balance. He gets all the way to the table like this…

…and realizes he can’t stand up.

As he realizes it, so do his captors outside the cell. Their chorus of laughter sings humiliation down Peter’s spine, settling low in his gut. 

This shouldn’t be so difficult; flexibility and dexterity are this  _thing._

Cheeks and ears blazing pink, Peter rests his forehead against the edge of the table. He flexes his hands against the binds. The webbing there is so tight that its cutting off circulation to his hands, and his fingers are beginning to blue. 

Peter would give up now, but he can’t let the humiliation defeat him; it just makes him more stubborn to prove them wrong.

Though it hurts to grind his patellas against the concrete, Peter rocks onto his knees to get a bit of height. It’s not enough, and he must shift back towards his feet to get enough momentum to roll onto his kneecaps. 

Success.

Peter knocks his chin on top of the table, bracing himself by the jaw. Straining his back and wrists against the bonds, Peter manages to grip the plastic edge of the tray with his teeth and drag it towards himself. Then, he flicks his head to the side and sends it to the floor.

There’s a quiet murmur from the spectators outside his cell.

Peter starts the water bottle, which has rolled only a few inches away. He hobbles towards it and wriggles his foot out away from his thigh. Feeling ingenious, Peter attaches the bottle to the sticky bottom of his foot and twists off the cap with his hand.  
  
Just as Peter is reveling in his minor success, someone from the hall calls out, “How you going to drink that, Spider-Man?”

Man, fuck these guys.  
  
Peter simply rests the open bottle on the floor, and swivels himself around. Making eye contact with the heckler, he dips his head, attaches his mouth around the bottle neck and throws his head back to guzzle all the water inside.

All of it.  
  
When he’s done, he spits out the empty bottle. Peter sets his sight on the cellophane wrapped sandwich next. 

His cheeks burn, but at least he’s still burning.


	12. Despite All My Rage - Bucky in a Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA locks Bucky (and the Winter Soldier) in an animal cage. Naked.

The first time they try to get Bucky Barnes into the cage, it doesn’t go well.

Their first mistake is stripping him naked. Bucky is a frightening thing when his dignity is threatened.

He’s already lost the arm, so getting him out of his shirt isn’t much trouble. But they have to cuff his ankles together and then cut his pants off with scissors. Even then, Bucky manages to kick someone in the eye.  
  
“Act like a beast, get treated like a beast,” one of them spits at him before dragging him towards a cage.

It’s a low, metal kennel. Small and cramped. With a slatted wooden bottom. Bucky can tell on sight that it’s made for a dog. A large dog, but a dog nonetheless.

Bucky fights all the way into it, gripping one hand outside the kennel, kicking his feet, biting. He manages to keep half his body outside until one man has to literally stuffs him in with his boot.  
  
In order to fit, his body has to curl over itself. His bare spine presses against the metal roof of the cage, knees tucked under his chest. 

Bucky tries to shift into a more dignified position, but can’t find any room for his elbow or spine. The cage is so small, he can’t even lift his head. His nose stays planted to the wood.

He grits his teeth. Wills away the hot saltwater tears that prick his eyes. It doesn’t quite work.

Even though he’s folded his body into a near-fetal position, he still feels vulnerable. On display. His naked haunches are at a higher angle than his head. Though he presses his knees tightly together, Bucky can still feel the hang of his genitals in the open air. 

Exposed.

Hot mortification courses through him. Bucky cradles his remaining arm to his chest, burning and simmering under HYDRA scrutiny.

They spray him with water through the bars (to “cool him down”) and Bucky snarls, throws his sides against the cage until the whole thing rattles. 

Maybe he is a beast.

—

They keep him locked in the kennel for four days. By the time they let him out, his back is so hunched, he can’t straighten it on his own.

—

The first time they kennel the Winter Soldier, it starts off well.

Rumlow orders the asset to strip, which it does. He orders it to fold its clothes and set them on top of the metal wire kennel in the center of the room, which it does. He orders it to get onto its hands and knees, which it does.

But when Rumlow orders the asset into the cage, it hesitates. It even goes so far as to sit up on its knees and look back at Rumlow. 

It doesn’t question him, it doesn’t refuse, it just pauses.

Hesitation isn’t total submission. Rumlow takes the asset by the hair and forcibly drags it into the cell. 

The moment the asset is inside the cage, the tremors wrack its entire body.

It doesn’t feel fear. It isn’t allowed to feel fear. But it can’t help the slow crawl of wrongness that spreads through it. It can’t help the way its instincts scream for escape.

Without thinking of punishment, of obeying, of  _defying,_  it rips open the side of the kennel with its prosthetic arm and claws itself out of the opening it’s created.

Even when it escapes the kennel, it still feels trapped.


	13. Force-feeding Carlton Drake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riot forces Drake to eat. Requested by the lovely lmtyl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: not recommended for those with an eating disorder

“I can’t,” Carlton gasps, hands shaking around the mass of raw meat squelching between his fingers. “No more. I can’t.”

Riot grumbles,  _You can. You will. And you will be grateful for what I give you._

He tries to resist, tries to shove the meat away from himself, but his hands don’t belong to him. His mouth doesn’t either. And he’s forced to unhinge his aching jaw and sink his teeth into more meat.

_Do I have to do everything for you? Move your mouth and **chew**._

His tongue and jaw work against the nausea to slowly masticate the meat into a grisly pulp. Riot forces his tongue to the roof of his mouth, forces the muscles of his throat to contract.

Carlton swallows, and the slow, cold crawl of raw meat down his esophagus nearly suffocates him.

He’s full to bursting now. They’ve been eating for hours. His kidneys ache. His intestines ache. Carlton is hot all over, sweat breaking out over his temples. Each time he moves, the food inside him shifts and seems to expand.

Carlton presses a hand to his distended stomach, and wills that it all stays put. If the raw meat was awful going down, he can only imagine how it’ll feel coming back up.

Riot gives a satisfactory growl. It lifts Carlton’s hands for him and forces him to lick the juice off his fingers.

_Just a bit more,_ it promises,  _And then we’ll be strong enough._


	14. Eddie Begs for Mercy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie is interrogated and electrocuted. He begs for mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: electrical torture

As far as interrogation tactics go, this one starts pretty simple. They tie him to a chair and attach him to a car battery at four points. The clamps go around the sensitive webbing between his thumb and index finger, between his toes.

Each time they ask a question, they shock him. Even if he doesn’t know the answer. Even if he  _does._ Even if he answers it. 

Over and over again. They shock him. They aren’t interested in his answers. They’re interested in his pain.

Though his hands are bound to the arms of the chair, they leave his legs free so that he can struggle.

And oh, Eddie struggles.

His body seizes with the electricity and his legs kick out involuntarily. Even when he is no longer being shocked, his muscles contract too tightly to let him take a full breath. Eddie wheezes, his lungs in a panic inside his chest.

Eddie fights his body to get air into his lungs. He can barely hear the question over his own frantic gasping, over the chatter of his teeth.

“Who is your source, Mr. Brock?”

Mr. Brock? Is that his name? It seems astounding to Eddie that he even has a name. That someone decided to commit a word to this body which is only a vessel for more and more pain.

“B-buh-bite me,” Eddie stammers out.

Electricity is a pure, clean burn. The kind that sends waves of trembling agony through the muscles and nerves themselves. So precise, so direct, that it feels as if the pain is coming from within Eddie. From the convulsing muscles themselves.

Still, he doesn’t reveal his source.

His captor frowns. “Seems like the voltage isn’t high enough, then.” 

He readjusts the clamps on Eddie’s hands. When they’re moved, Eddie can see a burnt gridmark pattern on his skin from where the electricity burned him. 

One of these clamps is reapplied to his hand, deeper into the meat of his palm. But Eddie’s captor hesitates with the second clamp. 

He opens and closes it slowly, almost like a mute puppet, before saying, “Stick out your tongue.”

Eddie’s hands and feet are still sore from the last course of electricity, his whole body quaking with the aftershocks. If electricity hurts this much when applied to his extremities…

His tongue is more vulnerable. His tongue is  _wet._ His tongue is  _connected_ to his  _skull._

Eddie shuts his mouth and shakes his head. “Mm mm!” he hums, jerky and more panicked than he wants to admit. “Mm mm, mm mm.”

His captor just chuckles and digs his fingers into Eddie’s cheeks, prying his jaw open.

“Please, oh God,” Eddie says the moment his molars part. “Please, please, don’t. Have mercy. God. Please.”

And then, when his captor seems to listen, Eddie continues begging. 

“Please, not the tongue. My hand. My chest. My fucking ears. Anything. Just not my tongue, please.”

He doesn’t realize that tears are rolling down his cheeks until his captor brushes them away for him.

“Please,” Eddie repeats. His teeth are chattering again, a fast staccato inside his skull, but he isn’t sure why. “Please.”


	15. Mobility Restricting Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA restricts Bucky's mobility and embarrass him. Requested by the lovely black-polarf.

Once HYDRA lops off his arm, it becomes much easier to subdue Bucky Barnes. In fact, they find new ways to restrain him, each more humiliating than the last.

While the stump is still healing, they wrap his remaining arm to his chest and leave him like that. For two days, he can’t eat or drink or brush the hair from his face or scratch the itch on his knee. 

For two days, he’s sealed in his inability to do anything for himself.

When a HYDRA agent brings in a tray of food, complete with utensils, Bucky catches on.

Blushing, humiliated, he drags the words to his tongue and asks, “Could you feed me? Please?”

The HYDRA agent shakes her head. “I’ll need something from you first.”

Bucky looks over himself, to the arm strapped to his chest, to his bare feet. He shrugs. “I’m a little short on change these days.”

She smiles, and instructs him to “Sit on the cot.”

Reluctantly, sensing a trick, but out of options, Bucky obeys.

The HYDRA agent shackles his ankles together. The metal manacles are separated by a length of chain only a few inches long. He won’t be able to walk so much as hobble around the cell.

It’s an indignity, but not one greater than the loss of his left arm. Not one greater than his need for food.

Shame fills Bucky.

Shame drips hot down his spine as he opens his mouth for the HYDRA agent to ladle porridge into his mouth. It sinks into his belly with each dry swallow. It heats his body. He can’t even look her in the eye as she lifts the spoon to his lips, as he chews and swallows. 

She spills porridge on the hook of his jaw, perhaps on purpose. 

Bucky withers as he grits out the question, “Could you…”

“Could I what?” she says, her Russian accent makes her sound deceptively sweet. She did this on purpose. He knows it and he burns knowing it.

Bucky closes his eyes. He flexes his fingers against his chest. They’re numb, the circulation cut off from being trapped for so long.

“Could you clean my face for me? Please.”

The agent rubs his jaw clean, a rough scrape against the stubble. “You need us,” she tells him. “HYDRA will provide for you. Do you understand that now?”

Bucky curls and uncurls his fingers, brushing his bare sternum. It’s one of the few movements he can make.

He nods. “I understand that now.”


	16. Windsor Knot - Collaring/Walling Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is collared and banged into a wall. Yinsen, whom I love, is there.

It starts when Tony won’t stop mouthing off. As he explains to Yinsen, if he doesn’t snark at the terrorists, then they win.

“They win either way, Mr. Stark,” Yinsen says, but Tony thinks he’s being dour for dramatic effect.

He’s wrong, of course.

They loop a single coil of rope around his neck: a knot so loose that it rests against the dip of his clavicle. They leave his arms and legs unbound.

“Thanks,” Tony says to his terrorist buddies, surveying the slipknot around his throat. “But I typically prefer a Windsor knot. I find it’s just a little more sophis–”

The terrorist wraps the length of rope around his hand…

…and uses it to slam Tony into the wall.

His temple crushes against the stone first, and his whole head reverberates with the impact. There’s a high-pitched ringing in his ears that he has to shake out. His vision is a little fuzzy around the edges.

That’s not good.

Just when he recovers from the blow, he’s swung into the wall again. This time it’s his nose that smacks into the stone. The sick crunch of cartilage is quickly followed by a gush of blood that drips directly into Tony’s mouth.

He spits it out in a pinkish glob, nose curled in disgust. “Taking a book out of the CIA’s page, huh?” He pauses. His head throbs. “Wait, I think I got that one backwards.”

For his trouble, he’s rammed into the wall again. And again. By the end of it, his head is practically pulsating. His brain itself feels bruised inside his skull. And his skull isn’t feeling much better. 

Tony loses some time to unconsciousness. When he comes to, Yinsen is by his side.

Yinsen dabs his forehead with a cool cloth. Tony could probably use an icepack, but one makes do when they’re imprisoned in a literal cave with terrorists.

“Questionable interrogation tactics aside that wasn’t so–wait what is this?” He touches a hand to a metal ring that encircles his neck. “Is this a…?”

“A collar,” Yinsen confirms. “For next time, they say.”

Tony groans. “I still prefer a Windsor knot.” 


	17. Out from Death - Burying Tony Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is buried alive. Requested by the darling momodashii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: claustrophobia, asphyxiation, literally being buried alive

Tony wakes up short of breath and sore. At first, he thinks he’s in bed with the curtains drawn. He unfolds his arm from his chest to reach for his phone.

His arm hits wood. That’s…well, that’s bad.

Tony feels along the wooden walls next to him. He only has about half a foot of space on each side. His fingers follow the wood to the low ceiling, only three inches above his face. When he extends his feet, his toes find more wood.

It’s pitch dark, but Tony knows exactly where he is: he’s in a coffin. He’s been buried alive.

Panic grips him. Though he knows he shouldn’t, knows he should keep  _calm,_ he can’t stop the rapid spasming of his lungs. The hyperventilation. The wild, blind fear.

His mind races ahead of him. Tony’s body is already tight and aching from the cramped space. His feet and hands feel swollen and inflexible. His mouth is dry down through his esophagus. He’s been in here for a while. Maybe drugged.

If he’s short of breath, then he’s already running out of air. In a space of this size, he had maybe about three hours of oxygen from the moment the dirt hit the coffin lid. If the air is already thin, he has maybe 30 minutes to an hour left.

Shit.

He feels over his pockets. They’ve, of course, removed any of his nanotech and the StarkTech phone in his jeans. He’s got his wallet, but even the hard plastic credit cards have been confiscated.

All he has is a picture of Pepper. And it’s too dark to see. He can only feel the paper edge, the smooth front.

Then he remembers: he keeps spare nanotech in the sole of his shoe. If he can just reach down and…

Tony’s shoulder hits the side of the coffin. Even if he stretches and extends his aching arm, even if he tries to tuck his foot as close to his hand as he can…the space is too small. He can’t reach.

He can’t reach. It’s right there with him and he  _can’t reach._

For fifteen minutes, Tony is lost in despair. He bangs his fist against the lid of the coffin and screams until he’s hoarse. 

No one comes for him.

—

It’s the cold that gets to him. The cold that rattles through his sore body and forces him back into action. He’s Tony Stark. He can’t die like this.

He feels through his pockets again and discovers a bic pen in his left jacket pocket. The narrow rod of plastic feels like an unsurpassed victory. If he makes it out of this alive, Tony will always carry a pen.

Next, he rips off the sleeve of his jacket. Squirming each way, Tony wraps the sleeve around his face, tying it in a knot over his nose.

Using his nails, he feels along the lid of the coffin to find a seam in the wood. He jams the metal point of the pen between the slats and uses his leather wallet to hammer the pen into the wood. He only needs to hit the pen a few times before the wood splinters and cracks open. 

They tried to kill Tony Stark with cheap pine.

Tony manages one last deep breath before the dirt pours through the open crevice. The sleeve around his face prevents him from suffocating. But the press and weight of several pounds of dirt overwhelms him.

If he wants to survive without being crushed to death, he needs to act fast.

Using his hands and the pen to carve through the most hard-packed dirt, Tony digs himself out. His fingers are freezing, his whole body numb. He can’t breathe. Worse, he can’t tell which way is up.

But the dirt shifts. And then it shifts again.

Since he’s only been buried hours ago, the soil is pliant and not yet frozen. Slowly, fighting each second of the way, Tony Stark digs his way out from death into the bright light of day.


	18. Clean, Carve, Cryo - Carving/Tattooing Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky is carved and, later, tattooed by HYDRA. Requested by aylwyyn228, who understands me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: mutilation, blood, scars, cryo, self-harm, needles, brief homophobic language, brief implication of sexual violence

When they extract Bucky from HYDRA possession, the first thing Steve does is ship him directly to medical.

“Medical” being Sam Wilson, a medikit, and a portable gurney in the quinjet as they race to Wakanda.

At Sam and Nat’s insistence, Bucky is strapped to the gurney while he’s unconscious. “Not for our safety,” Nat explains, “But for his.”

Dutifully, Steve straps his friend down. “Sorry, buddy,” he says while he locks down Bucky’s left foot. He’s about to move to the right, when something catches his eye. Something beneath the peeling rubber of his boot.

Slowly, Steve removes Bucky’s shoe and sets it aside. There, on the ball of Bucky’s foot, silver scar tissue crosses over his skin.

A Soviet star has been  _carved_  into his foot. Like a stamp. Like Bucky is a  _product._

“What the hell?” Steve whispers at the same moment Sam says, “Steve, you’re gonna want to see this.”

Dread crawls through Steve as he lifts his eyes. Sam has unbuckled Bucky from his tactical gear. Underneath, there’s another star carved in, spanning the breadth of his chest.

—

Bucky’s chest is dripping blood. They’ve dragged a hunting knife through his chest five times. He thought the grind of the blade over his sternum was the worst part, but he was wrong. The worst part is looking down and seeing what they’ve carved:  
  
A star.

Bucky lifts his trembling hand to the bleeding carving. The top point crests between his pectorals and the arms spread over his ribs. Each inhale is made painful by the incisions…  
  
…but not so painful as the fact that they  _mutilated_ him.

After that, Bucky is out of control. Untamable and wild with rage. They have to seal him in cryo to subdue him. The blood freezes over.

—

Bucky Barnes is in and out of cryo for the next few months. The Soviets thaw him to clean the wound, but when he drives a scalpel through a doctor’s eye, the Soviets re-carve the star and toss him back into cryo.  
  
Cryo, clean, carve, cryo.

This process repeats, over and over, until Bucky is too weak to fight the medics. When he submits to the cleaning and re-carving without putting up a fight, the Soviets put the hunting knife in his hand.

“Carve your own star,” an agent says in stilted English. “And we’ll give you a blanket.”

Bucky is still shivering from the cold. Melting frost drips from his eyelashes. His teeth chatter. His skin is blue.

Still, he holds the blade steady in his hand. He kicks one foot up, propping his left ankle over his right knee. Every Soviet in the cell takes a fearful step back when Bucky unsheathes the knife; he’s done more damage with a spoon than most can accomplish a buck knife.

But they needn’t be afraid; Bucky has every intention of complying.  
  
He makes quick work of the bottom of his foot. Without finesse or artistry, he carves a quick star into the ball, right beneath his toes. When he’s done, he wipes the blood off with his palm and reaches out for the offered blanket.

—

“What the fuck is this?”    
  
The Winter Soldier’s new handlers are American. They call him the fist of HYDRA. He doesn’t quite know what that means, but HYDRA sounds familiar.  
  
“Don’t ask him,” another agent says, crowding around the asset. They’ve discovered the star carved in his chest. “The guy is a potato. But his notes say there’s a matching star on his foot.”  
  
“His foot? Didn’t realize we were purchasing damaged goods.”  
  
The second agent knocks a fist against the asset’s metal shoulder. The ugly seam of scar tissue and metal. The asset turns his head away.

“You sure about that?”  
  
“Let me see this second star.”  
  
They pry off the asset’s boots while it waits patiently in the chair. When they find the star on his left foot, they both whistle.  
  
“Wow, okay. You think the Soviets were feeling possessive or…?”  
  
“We should give him something on the other foot. To commemorate his transfer to HYDRA. Would you like that, buddy? A little token of our affection?”  
  
At the word ‘buddy,’ the asset lifts his gaze. There’s no question in his eyes, just mere attention. The HYDRA agents give a shudder, and one of them shoves his head away.  
  
”God, this guy is a creep.”  
  
”Yeah, well, he’s not really a guy, is he? That’s why all this shit is carved into him.”  
  
“Can’t carve anything in him, anymore. The new serum will heal that right up.”  
  
“What about a tattoo?”  
  
“Huh,” the agent says, smiling at the asset. “That might work.”  
  
—  
  
The buzz of the tattoo gun piques the asset’s interest. It watches with muted fascination as they lift his right foot and apply the buzzing gun. It doesn’t hurt, feels more like being scratched over and over again.   
  
The agents laugh and chatter while they move the gun over the heel of his foot. “What should we put there?” one asks the other. “ _Fist of HYDRA_?”  
  
“More like  _Faggot of HYDRA_ ,” the other snickers.   
  
“Fist _ed_ by HYDRA,” the first adds. “But the boss won’t like that.”

“It would make a good tramp stamp, though.”

“It really would.”

They seem to be enjoying themselves. The Winter Soldier leans back and waits for this tedious process to end.  
  
When they finish, the bottom of his foot feels hot and wet. It hurts no more than a sunburn. Walking is difficult for the rest of the day, and they mock him for that too, but by the next the asset isn’t even hobbling anymore.  
  
—  
  
“Check the other foot,” Bucky says, lifting his head.  
  
Sam and Steve startle; they hadn’t realized that Bucky was awake. But he doesn’t fight the constraints, doesn’t even question why he’s there. All he does is repeat the suggestion:  
  
“Check the other foot.”   
  
Wincing, Steve and Sam exchange a glance. It’s Steve who takes off the right boot. Steve who clasps a hand over his mouth and looks away.  
  
On the ball of Bucky’s left foot: a shakily carved star. On the heel of his right: a HYDRA octopus.


	19. Well Done - Burning Peter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kingpin burns Peter at the stake.

“Do you know how to cook a steak, Peter Parker?”

Peter squirms against the ropes. The friction grinds against his skin. “I know I’m  _tied_ to a stake right now.”

Kingpin looks unamused. He sighs and pulls at Peter’s hand, not loosening his bonds. Rather, he just pinches the heel of Peter’s palm.

“This part here…” Kingpin prods at the flesh just under Peter’s thumb. Where the flesh is soft and pliant. “…Is the exact firmness of a medium rare steak.”

“Mm,” Peter hums to disguise the quiver of fear in his throat. “That’s the only way to cook a steak.”

Kingpin squeezes lower down Peter’s palm, to the bony ridge above his wrist. The pressure is enough to verge on crushing.

“See, I disagree,” Kingpin hums, almost conversational. “I like my meat well done. And this–” He presses down hard enough that there is a crunch in Peter’s metacarpal. “–This is the firmness of a steak well done.” 

Peter opens his mouth to make a joke about ketchup, but when he does, his mouth is instantly filled with gasoline. One of Kingpin’s henchmen has doused him with at least a gallon of petroleum. It soaks his hair, his clothes, all the way down to his feet.  
  
His feet. Which rest atop a pile of kindling. Newspaper stuffed under dry, thin wood…which is being soaked with more gasoline.

Peter’s eyes shoot up to Kingpin, who takes out a cigar and a book of matches. 

Peter spits out a mouthful of gasoline. “I don’t think you want to do this,” he says, voice thin and wavering. “Come on, man. Come on, I - I -”  _I don’t want to die like this._ “Please.”  _Please don’t let me die like this._

Kingpin lights his cigar. “Goodbye, Spider-Man,” he says and drops the lit match onto the kindling at Peter’s feet.

Peter is crying now, can’t help himself, he’s so afraid. And he lifts his wet eyes up, away from his burning feet and searing ankles.

The flames lick up his legs rapidly, catching fire first to the gas, and then his clothes, and then his skin…and then the flesh underneath.

It’s a pain like no other. All consuming. The kind that makes thinking impossible and sets his body dancing in agony. Peter screams. He screams and he screams and he writhes against the stake as he’s burned alive.

He can feel his skin crack and flake off.

When the ropes singe off, Peter collapses onto the ground, still consumed by flames.

Then, abruptly, he’s not.

They’ve dumped water,  _water_ over him, extinguishing the fire. For a moment, Peter is adrift in relief. In the simple pleasure of  _not_ being ignited.

Kingpin leans down and picks up his hand. He squeezes Peter’s palm and presses another down into his charred bicep.

“Medium,” Kingpin sniffs, “But not well done.” 

He snaps his fingers and more gasoline is dumped onto Peter’s cooked body. It stings the cracked skin and burns the nerves. Kingpin takes one last puff on his cigar…

…and drops the lit butt onto Peter. Within moments, he’s ablaze again.


	20. Flight of the... - Exploiting Bucky's Phobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumlow learns that the Winter Soldier is afraid of bees. Steve makes an appearance.
> 
> Requested by the wonderful filthy-crown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: insects; bees; hornets; wasps; brief mention of: spiders, snakes, and heights

Nothing much gets through to the Winter Soldier. The guy just isn’t afraid of anything. Which Brock Rumlow finds nothing short of disappointing.

Just last week, Rumlow sealed the guy in a tank full of spiders—hundreds and hundreds of motherfucking  _spiders_ —and the Soldier did nothing. Just stood there, blinking at Rumlow. Waiting.

The fuck is that about?

Rumlow has tried snakes—a pit of vipers squirming over each other and the Soldier—he’s tried rats, drowning, confined spaces…hell, Rumlow even convinced a private to dress as a clown and…nothing.

Nada. Zilch. The Winter Soldier is, quite frankly, afraid of nothing.

Rumlow’s even tried heights which, given the Soldier’s boo hoo history, should have been a gimme. But dangling him over the edge of a skyscraper face first, was just plain  _boring._ All the Soldier did was stare down into the abyss below. As if the fall was inevitable.

So, Rumlow was more or less certain that the Winter Soldier has the fear totally tortured out of him. As far as Rumlow was concerned, the guy was the emotional equivalent of brain dead. He figured that his limbic system was basically powered by a potato.

Until one day, after a successful Winter Soldier mission, a miracle happened. That miracle was a bumblebee floating into the debriefing room.

Looking back on it, Rumlow should have thought of it first.

While three STRIKE agents argued over whether to slaughter or liberate the bee, Rumlow watched the Winter Soldier.

It was nearly imperceptible, the way the Winter Soldier sat ramrod straight. The clench of his fists. The way he kept his eyes trained on the bumblebee, even after the agents trapped it in a jar.

Nearly imperceptible, but Rumlow saw all of it. Including the fear in the whites of the Winter Soldier’s eyes.  _Gotcha._

_—-_

Rumlow is giddy as he straps the Winter Soldier to the chair. He can’t help but chatter to him while he tightens the straps around his wrists and calves.

“Is it anything black and yellow, or does it have to have a stinger?” Rumlow asks, buckling his metal arm in three different places. “You know what, don’t answer that.”

There is a line of opaque jars on the table behind them. Four of them. Rumlow takes up one of these jars now and unscrews it.

“Don’t tell me. I want it to be a surprise.”

He rests the lip of the jar against the Winter Soldier’s bare arm. Three honeybees crawl out and the Soldier instantly flinches back. Sheer terror unleashes over his face. The same straight spine. The same clenched fists.  
  
Rumlow can’t help but laugh at the Soldier’s terror. This guy can get shot in the kneecap and not bat an eye, but now he’s hyperventilating over a fuzzy buzzy honeybee? What’s more, Rumlow looked honeybees up the night before, and they rarely sting.

The Soldier doesn’t seem to know this. Not based on the way his eyes stay locked on their slow crawl up his skin. Not based on the way his breath quickens, and fingers quiver. Even the metal hand is shaking.

Delighted, Rumlow unscrews the second jar. Bumblebees, five or six of them, float out. They are enormous, the size of quarters, and they don’t escape the Soldier’s attention.

Two of the honeybees fly up to join them. The third rests in the hollow of the Soldier’s elbow, where the skin is thin and delicate. His eyes flick up to the bumblebees, then they go straight back to the honeybee. Paralyzed with fear. Rumlow can make out a faint tremor of the tendons in the Soldier’s arm

The bumblebees hover closer, curious, and the Soldier grits his jaw. And though bumblebees aren’t often aggressive, their loud buzzing must wreak havoc on the Soldier’s fear.

He’s twitching in his chair, trying to stabilize his breathing and failing. Rumlow couldn’t be more pleased.

Next up is the vespers, the ones that Rumlow is most excited for. The third jar is jam-packed with wasps. Mean little fucks that can sting repeatedly just for the joy of stinging. 

Rumlow gives them a shake before resting the open jar between the Winter Soldier’s legs.

A mass of yellow and black insects swarm from the jar and crawl up the Soldier’s thighs. Even Rumlow can admit that the contrast of yellow creeping over the dark tactical pants is scary. Especially when they start sinking in their stingers.

“Why bees, I wonder,” Rumlow says as he plucks up the fourth and final jar. He shakes it, feels the hard bodies of the hornets inside knocking against the glass. This jar is the largest, a whole nest’s worth of angry hornets. “Why is it bees you’re afraid of?”

The Soldier’s eyes are on the jar. He manages a shaky breath. There’s a wasp clinging to his neck, its stinger still stuck in his throat. It bats its translucent wings, trying to escape.

“Commander,” the Soldier says, as if to answer the question. His voice wavers. The wasp dislodges itself from his neck and crawls towards his ear. The Soldier opens his mouth again to answer. “Commander…”

But then he hesitates.

With a mixture of vague disappointment and outright glee, Rumlow realizes that the Winter Soldier doesn’t know why he’s afraid of bees. Why the wasps swarming his limbs frighten him more than their stingers.

Rumlow smashes the hornet jar on the floor and leaves the cell. When the door closes behind him, he can hear the asset scream. The sound is raw and terrified. It’s more satisfying than Rumlow anticipated.

—-

Steve comes into Bucky’s room with breakfast on a tray. The moment he enters, he sees that Bucky is standing stock still next to the wall, barely breathing. Something at the window has his attention.

No, not his attention, he’s  _afraid_ of what’s at the window. His chest beats up and down. His hands are clenched into fists.

Bucky’s eyes dart from the window to Steve. He thrusts up his arms, both palms open in warning to Steve. “Stop,” he hisses. “Don’t come in.”

Steve frowns. Bucky hasn’t had a relapse in memory in a few months. “Buck, what’s wro—“

Then he sees it: a wasp. Its thin waist and spindly legs send an instinctual shudder down Steve’s spine. Pre-serum, Steve was deathly allergic to bees. Especially wasps. One sting would make him swell up like a balloon and send him straight to the hospital.

He’s not any more.

“It’s alright,” Steve soothes and approaches the window.

Bucky’s entire body seizes up as if to prepare for a fight. But he needn’t bother. Steve simply opens the window. The wasp unfurls its wings and floats away. Steve remains unstung.

“It’s alright, Buck,” Steve repeats. He approaches Bucky now, as lightly and tentatively as he approached the window. “I’m alright.”

Bucky’s eyes are still on the window. A faint sheen of sweat slicks his face and chest. He rubs a hand against the side of his neck and nods. “Alright,” he says, but his voice wavers.


	21. Bone Breaking Peter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Toomes & crew hit Peter with a baseball bat.

“I say we hit him with the bat again.”

“Hear me out, but I say maybe we…don’t?” Peter manages to suggest before the metal bat collides with his ribs.

Two of them crack at once, a chorus of snapping bone, and Peter wheezes from the impact. His left ribs are already shattered, and this many cracked ribs spell trouble for the delicate organs beneath.

He tries not to breathe too deeply. A punctured lung is very painful. He knows from experience. Even shallow breaths pose a risk; Peter can feel the sharp edge of his broken ribs press against his lungs.

Toomes looks over Peter, strung up by the arms. He’s dangling limply from his wrists. His left wrist is fractured from where they’ve already struck him with the bat. His ribs are fractured. His nose is shattered. They’re running out of bones to break.  
  
“Try the legs next,” he suggests.  
  
The metal bat whistles as it hurdles through the air. Peter is struck in the knee, and the patella shatters like a wine glass dropped on the floor.

Peter can’t even form words. All that comes out is a shaky, warbling moan that hitches with each breath. The pain consumes his entire leg. He barely feels the second impact which splinters his tibia.  
  
Toomes lifts Peter’s head by the jaw to get a look at his face. When they make eye contact, Peter smiles. His nose is broken right in the center and the blood flows directly into his mouth.

“Hiya, Mr. Toomes,” Peter says, spitting out blood. “How’s Liz?”

Fury and irritation light up Toomes’ face. “Hit him in the jaw,” he spits. “Maybe that’ll shut him up.”

“Oh,” Peter says, shifting his broken wrist. “You’d be surprised.”

The henchman reels back the bat and swings it directly into his face. Peter’s jaw cracks, and shifts two inches to the left. Tears spring to Peter’s eyes because,  _yeah,_ that one really really stings. More than stings. It’s agony.

“Ow,” Peter slurs around his broken jaw. He can’t even cradle the break in his hands. It just hangs loose off its hinges.

“Hey, boss. I don’t mean to poke holes, but weren’t we trying to get him to talk?”  
  
Mr. Toomes hesitates. “Fuck,” he says after a moment. “You’re right.” Then he strikes Peter over the cheek in frustration. The broken jaw burns pain all through his sinuses and down his neck.  
  
“Let him heal up over night,” Toomes says. “We’ll come back to him tomorrow.”


	22. Child Gladiator - Bucky & Peter Fight to the Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA makes Bucky and Peter fight to the death.
> 
> Requested by the elegant magicaltyphoonlady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't show the death.

They strip Peter of his webshooters and spidey-suit. Then they toss him into a cell without a single clue what he’s even  _doing_ here.

And they wish him good luck.

From the darkness emerges a man with no facial expression. There’s a glint of his metal arm in the darkness, and Peter recognizes he recognizes this guy.

This is the soldier guy from Germany. Captain America’s friend.   
  
The totally blank expression on his face is new, though. That sends off alarm bells…well, that and the hair lifting on Peter’s arms. 

Thanks, spidey senses. Peter  _sees_ the brainwashed super-serum-soldier headed straight towards him. Really useful stuff.

The Soldier hurdles his arm down into Peter, a blow that would certainly crush his skull if it landed. Peter catches his wrist with one hand.

But the Soldier isn’t surprised this time, doesn’t hesitate to marvel over someone of Peter’s stature blocking his blow. Without pause, he throws Peter off himself…

…and into the concrete wall.

Peter hits it hard and drops straight to the floor. Asphalt crumbles around him. He cracked the wall.

“That arm is so cool, but it sucks so bad,” he moans.

Peter is fast, but the cell is tiny. In a space of this size, Peter can only dodge and roll away from the Soldier for so long. Eventually, he’ll be caught. And he has nothing to defend himself with. Not even the webshooters.

But Peter is strong. Stronger than even the Soldier if he’s able to catch his metal arm mid-swing. And he’s faster. Much, much faster.

Not to mention that the lights are on in the Soldier, but no one is home.

With blank eyes, the Soldier tries to curbstomp Peter while he’s down, but Peter rolls away just in time. He snags the Soldier’s ankle while his other foot is still lifted. With a sharp pull, he sends the soldier to the ground. Peter scampers back up to his feet. 

In his frustration, the Soldier rips a chunk of concrete from the wall and hurls it at Peter. He manages to dodge the bulk of it, but the edge catches his temple. 

For a moment, Peter is dazed. And that moment is enough for the Soldier to capitalize on. He’s up on his feet in an instant– _fuck,_ Peter missed his window–and he lands a quick, brutal jab to Peter’s diaphragm. 

And, oh damn, does that hurt. It knocks the air out of Peter, leaves him empty and burning for oxygen. But time is off the essence. The Soldier expects him to be reeling. 

So, Peter catches him by the metal arm. Moving as fast as he can, Peter kicks his feet up and glues them to the side of the Soldier. Leverage. 

Gripping the arm in both hands, Peter leans all his weight against it. The bolts wrench against the Soldier’s shoulder, a horrific metallic shriek that fills the air as the bolts carve through the arm.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Peter chants, even as he keeps pulling.

He yanks the metal arm clean off.

The scream that pours from the Soldier is pure animal. Unrestrained and unrelenting. The man staggers, stupefied and gasping.

Peter didn’t realize that the Soldier had sensation in that arm. When his eyes drop down to the prosthetic in his hands, there’s blood along the fray of wires at the shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he says again.

The Soldier charges at him.

Peter only has one shot of this. The severed prosthetic is all he has in terms of a weapon. He waits until the last possibly minute, then, with all his strength he swings the arm low, aiming for the Soldier’s legs.

The Soldier hits the ground and Peter’s already reeling the arm back for another blow. The Soldier anticipates this, and Peter just barely misses.

Shit.

He swings the arm again, and–despite his exhaustion, despite his fear, and despite his wild desperation–Peter manages to get a good hit in. Directly to the Soldier’s throat.

The Soldier splutters and Peter brings the arm down again. Both hands are on the wrist so that the heaviest part of the prosthetic, the bicep, batters down on the Soldier’s temple.

Blood drips down his face. There is a flicker, a brief flicker of recognition in his eyes. There’s a beat that stretches out between them. Less than a breath of time, but it feels like an eternity. Then Peter brings the arm down on his head again, and the Soldier is down for the count. His head lolls to the side, mouth open, eyes closed.

The Soldier could have taken Peter out…but didn’t. Why?

It isn’t until he’s caught his breath that Peter realizes that something is touching his leg. He looks down and sees the Soldier’s flesh hand loosely curled around his ankle.


	23. Easy Bake Oven - Burning Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is burnt alive in the Iron Man suit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: burning flesh, blisters, pus

It’s never good when the Iron Man suit is out of power. And his arc reactor has been ripped from his chest. And he’s strung up by the wrists and ankles…

…in the Iron Man suit.

…over what seems to be fire pit.

Tony tries to keep calm. He can never accomplish much without keeping his head straight. He has the suit. Even if it’s powered off, he has the suit. That’s something, right?

The pit below Tony ignites.

The flames don’t quite reach his feet, but the heat does. At first, it’s just his feet. Then it’s just his legs.  

But the Iron Man suit is made of metal, no duh, and heats up quickly.

Within minutes, Tony is sealed in boiling hot metal. Sweat pours down his temples and spine. Wherever his body touches metal–the bottoms of his feet, the palms of his hands, his elbows–has already begun to burn. Hot patches of skin.

There’s no way for him to avoid touching metal. No way to avoid burning himself.

 

—

 

It has become unbearably hot in the suit. 

The only thing keeping Tony alive is the heat resistant coating that JARVIS suggested after Mach 7 caught fire…but Tony is pretty sure that’s been fried off by now. Case in point, when he looks down the span of his own body, he can see the paint bubbling off the suit. It looks as if Iron Man is bleeding red and gold.

Gross.

Inside, his clothes are melting too, fusing with his skin. The pain is brutal, yes. Inexorable and unyielding unlike anything Tony has ever experienced in his life. 

But the smell…the smell is worse.

The sickly chemical stench of melting fabric mingles with the sizzle of his own flesh. And with minimal ventilation in the suit, Tony is sealed in with the scent of his own burning body.

Like being cremated. But slower.

 

—

 

Now that his clothes have melted to his body, his skin is unprotected from the metal. Blisters are beginning to bloom on his palms and the soles of his feet. Big blisters, swollen with pus.

He imagines that they started as light pink, and are deepening to a deep distended crimson. Puffed up like a pastry.

Tony can’t see them; he can’t see any of his body. He can only guess that the near-liquid heat all along his body is his melted clothes. Can only assume that the tender over-extension of his skin signals a blister.

Not being able to see his broiling body is its own torture. But then again, maybe he doesn’t want to know. Maybe he doesn’t want to see his bubbling skin and roasted flesh.

Tony’s always been vain like that.

 

—

 

Hour three of being slowly roasted alive, and Tony can’t catch his breath. It comes in short, husky pants. Almost like a panic attack.

They’ve turned off the fire below him, but the suit hasn’t lost any heat. The canon blasters in his boots have cracked open. The seams of the suit have completely melted shut.

“Hey, anybody going to let me out soon?” Tony shouts out to no one in particular. “This isn’t an Easy Bake Oven.”


	24. Wooden Horse for Peter

Peter has never seen anything like it before. When he’s led to the wooden wedge, propped up on four legs, he isn’t sure what to make of it.

“So, let me get this straight. I’m going to…” He looks up to his captors. “… _sit_  on that?”

They lift him up and set him down on the wedge. Instantly, Peter understands why they’re doing this: it hurts. It hurts a lot.

His toes just barely skim the ground, but when they tie his ankles to the legs, the full weight of his body grinds against the sharp wooden ridge. 

The cut of wood between his legs is intimately painful. A kind of violation that Peter has never experienced before. He tries to shift as much weight as he can onto his ankles, but the angle isn’t quite right; his weight bears down against the wood.

They leave his hands free. Probably to watch him struggle. And Peter presses his palms down against the slanted sides of the wooden horse. His sticky hands give him enough friction to leverage most of his weight off the sharp edge.

It’s not complete relief. His bound ankles prevent him from completely lifting off the horse. The wedge still cuts into him through his clothes.

 

—

 

Peter manages to hold his weight off the wooden horse for nearly an hour. His arms are shaking uncontrollably, elbows rattling like beads on a wire.

Anything is better than the cut of wood between his legs.

Despite the quake of his arms, Peter might have been able to keep his weight off the edge…until they start applying weights to his ankles.

“Look at him,” one his captors notes with a chuckle. “He’s sweating.”

“And shaking,” another agrees.

“I thought he’d be crying by now.”

“Give it a minute. Nobody lasts long on the horse.”

Somebody claps Peter on the back, hard. For a moment, his arms collapse. He pitches forward and the wood presses the metal teeth of his zipper against the delicate flesh there. Peter gasps and scrambles to push back up onto his arms.

Peter’s eyes start streaming.

“There we go,” the first captor says with a chuckle. “Knew that would do him in.”

The weight on his ankles is too much. The drag of gravity is relentless, and apathetically cruel. What does it matter to gravity if Peter stays up on his arms? What does it matter to gravity if he suffers on the horse? 

His right arm buckles and his body slumps against the wood. Then the other gives out. 

After so long with just the hint of pressure between his legs, the full weight of his body is agony. 

He squirms, trying to ease some of the pressure. But no matter which way he twists, no matter how he adjusts his body, the wood finds a sensitive place to dig in.

Peter looks up to the captors monitoring him. He sniffs and rubs his wet cheek against his shoulder. His whole body trembles.

“Why?” he asks, the question grit out between his teeth. He can’t manage anything more. Not a witty comment. Not a snappy comeback. Nothing.

One of his captors shrugs. “It’s fun to watch.”


	25. Inverted Hanging for Eddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spider-Man uses Eddie as bait.
> 
> Requested by the darling momodashii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: stress positions, heights, dislocated shoulder

Eddie dangles from the edge of a building. A very tall building. By the ankles. And he’s suspended by a thread of spider silk so thin, so translucent, that he can’t even see it in the dark.

So, Eddie is essentially just floating twenty stories high. Upside-down.

He doesn’t have a  _phobia_ of heights, per say, but…this is a lot for him. Especially since the Life Foundation vacuumed Venom out of his body and spat it out. 

If Eddie falls, he goes  _splat_. There’s no other way to cut it. 

The wind picks up and his body sways in a slow, torturous arc through the air. He clenches his eyes shut and breathes through his nose.

“Hey, kid,” he shouts up to Spider-Man, who is clinging to the wall above Eddie. “Remind me why you’re doing this again? I forget.”

“Well, we’re waiting for Venom,” Spider-Man says, looking out over the city. As if he’ll see it through the dark. “And that kind of makes you bait, buddy.”

Eddie nods, crosses his arms over his chest. The movement jostles his pocket, and his lighter falls out. Not breathing, Eddie watches it as it topples downwards through the air. That’s a long way to fall. 

When it lands, it hits the sidewalk with an audible crack. 

Eddie winces. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, that’s a long way down.

The blood is pounding to his head with each beat of his heart. What a fucking traitorous organ. Maybe Eddie  _will_ let Venom have a nibble of it. Show his heart who’s boss.

“Right,” Eddie says. The pressure in his head squeezes his voice into a tight clench. “And how does the upside-down thing factor into it?”

Spider-Man blinks, the strange goggle-eyes of his mask shuttering. “Huh,” he says, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him. “Drama?”

Eddie groans and drops his head down. The city spins below him, a dizzying fuzz of lights and movement.

“Wait, why? Is it…is it  _hurting_  you?” Spider-Man’s tone could be sincere. But it also sounds vaguely…

“Are you mocking me right now?”

Spider-Man crawls closer. He creeps down the line suspending Eddie. The man is surprisingly light-footed, even for a hero with his moniker. The spider-silk barely tremors. 

But Eddie still feels like he’s dancing on the end of the line. A worm on a fish hook.

Holy shit, they didn’t know Spider-Man had a  _dark_ streak. Venom might even appreciate this…once it gets over its rage over endangering Eddie.

Spider-Man crawls down over Eddie’s body. He crouches on his chest, hands and feet sticking to Eddie’s shirt. Eddie holds his breath and keeps very still.

For a moment they just stare at each other, eye to eye. Then Spider-Man abruptly lifts his head. Doing that sensing thing he does.

“For the record,” Spider-Man says, sounding distracted. “I’m really sorry about this.”

Spider-Man gives him a comforting pat on the shoulder and shoots a large web out into the dark. Eddie doesn’t even see Venom until it’s consumed in webbing. Spider-Man hurls Venom into the wall and launches himself after it. The two take off brawling onto the roof.

Meanwhile, Eddie swings precariously through the air. Spider-Man used him as a jumping off point and now he’s basically pendulum swinging twenty stories above Manhattan.

Eddie’s shoulder collides against the brick wall with a crunch.

“No, no, don’t mind me,” he says, cupping his dislocated shoulder in a shaking hand. “I’ll just hang out here while you two…do…that.”

 


	26. Tattooing Eddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie is forcibly tattooed.
> 
> Requested by the exquisite 3-thousand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: electricity, stun guns, needles

Most of Eddie’s tattoos are pretty stupid. E.g., the mascots of his favorite sports teams, tribal spirals… And a bunch of other random junk that, at one point or another, he thought looked cool.

Some of the tattoos, however, he still has a soft spot for.

Eddie is particularly fond of a portrait of the Madonna and Christ child he has on his left bicep. It was the first tattoo he’d ever sunk more than a hundred bucks into, and every time he flexes in the mirror, he’s comforted by the sight of her.

So, imagine his outrage when he discovers that the Life Foundation wants to stamp a tattoo over it. 

And when he finds out the tattoo will be a barcode? A fucking  _barcode_ over the Virgin  _fucking_  Mary?

Eddie just sort of loses it. They have to subdue him with a stun gun and then drag his incapacitated body into the chair.

While his neurons are still a jumble of electrified mush, a lab tech fires up the tattoo gun. Eddie tries to jerk away, but his brain is mis-wired. He can barely keep his eyes from crossing, much less control large muscle groups.

“Jesus Christ this guy is a pain…” the lab tech holding the tattoo gun says to his assistant.

“Tell me about it.” The assistant looks over Eddie, frowning. “How long will he be like this?”

“An hour,” the lab tech says and lowers the tattoo gun to Eddie’s arm.

After all the tattoos he’s gotten on his bicep, Eddie doesn’t have much sensation in his arm anymore. In fact, he managed to fall asleep while the artist inked the San Francisco skyline just under the Madonna portrait.

But he wasn’t lit up with one million volts of razor-hot electricity when he got the skyline tattoo. And fuck if his body isn’t already singing from  _that_ lovely experience.

His muscles are jumping and quivering, still reeling from the shock of the stun gun. When the cluster of needles hits his tricep, Eddie feels as if it lances straight through him out to the other side.

Eddie screams.

A latex gloved hand smacks over his mouth, silencing him instantly. “Jesus, you’d think we were murdering him.”

“He made me smudge.”

“Let me see.”

Both Eddie and the assistant look down over his bicep. When he sees it, Eddie can’t help himself. It’s too fucking horrible. Tears roll down the ridge of his cheek, spilling into ear.

The black segmented rectangle of the barcode darts directly over the Madonna, covering her eyes. 

And, yeah. It’s smudged.


	27. Steel Box - Burying Tony and Peter Alive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Peter are trapped in a steel coffin. Peter is claustrophobic.

As it turns out, the kid is scared of cramped spaces. Really, really afraid of cramped spaces. As in, maybe Tony should invest in a therapist for the kid if they get out of this.

 _When_  they get out of this.

“Okay,” Tony says. “Here’s what we’re not going to do. We’re not going to panic.”

He shifts as much as he can in the narrow space of the steel container they’ve been sealed in. 

Tony won’t call it a coffin, not even in his own head. It’s not over yet. He can feel movement. They’re still in the back of the truck. They’re not underground yet.

They are not underground yet.

There’s not a lot of room, but Tony wrangles his hands up from his sides. He braces Peter by both shoulders, giving him a firm squeeze.

They’re sealed in like sardines, face to face. More than a little uncomfortable, but mostly because the poor kid can’t stop shaking. Tony can even feel his heartbeat jackrabbiting against his ribs. 

He can feel it against his own heartbeat and it makes his whole chest ache.

“Hey, kid. You still with me?”

Peter nods, but it’s a rapid bob of his head. Just agreeing to whatever Tony says because he’s scared.

“Sure. Look, I need you to breathe slower. You listening? Slow it down.”

Tony models deep breathing for him. Big, exaggerated drags of air that inflate his whole chest. 

He’s trying not to think about how much oxygen they’re wasting right now. But it isn’t working very well. He keeps his eyes trained on the slim slivers of light through the seams of the coffin. Keeps thinking,  _That’s it._ That’s where they’re getting it all from. A crack no thicker than a hair’s breadth.

Nonetheless, Tony must be pretty convincing because Peter’s chest stills. His breath slows. He nods.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Stark. I just…” Peter’s fists clench and unclench between them. He’s got them lodged between their thighs and Tony’s gonna have a bruise tomorrow. “I don’t want to…”

“You’re not going to,” Tony interrupts, a thin waver of his own fear slicing through.

Peter gives a full body shiver that rattles the steel coffin. Box. The steel box.

“You’re not going to,” Tony repeats, steadier. 

Peter nods. Their foreheads knock, leaving an imprint of Peter’s sweat on Tony. The box is beginning to smell like sweat. Like Peter’s fear.

“Okay, Mr. Stark.” Peter sniffs. 

Tony can’t see if he’s crying or not. God, he hopes not. “I’m going to get you out of this.”

“I know.”


	28. Car Batteries for Sam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam Wilson is interrogated with a car battery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: electricity, stress positions, electrical burns

Sam wakes up with a headache. The kind that throbs behind his eyes and presses against his temples. The whole world feels like it’s whirling around him.

His vision comes into slow focus and he realizes the room  _is_ spinning. Literally. And it’s upside-down. 

Or at least,  _he_  is. 

One of those neo-Nazi types come into the cell, the one who never shut up about order through pain. When he sees that Sam is awake, he smiles.

“Thought you’d never wake up,” the commander says. He reaches up and holds the chain suspending Sam by the ankles. “How you doing?”

Sam stops spinning.

He shrugs. “I’ve got some suggestions, but can’t complain.”

“Good. Glad you’re comfortable.” The commander pats his hip, and the gesture is too chummy for Sam’s taste.

“Man, I don’t know you. Don’t  _touch_  me.”

The commander laughs, scrubs a hand over his face. There’s still sweat and grime from when they fought. His bottom lip is split from where Sam kicked him in the teeth.

“If you don’t like that touch, you’re really going to hate…”

The commander is interrupted when the cell doors open. A Nazi sycophant drags in a car batter complete with a loop of jumper cables.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Sam says as the commander clips the cables to the chain. 

The chain bruising his bare ankles. The chain that runs down his thighs to bind his wrists behind his back.

Fear rushes through Sam in a cold shudder. He focuses on the crack in the commander’s lower lip. The blood that seeps through is blood that Sam earned. Blood that was hard won. 

It anchors him.

When he’s finished applying the clamps, the commander crouches down to eye level with Sam. He smiles. “Am I kidding? I’m pretty amused by the situation, but I don’t think you’ll be.”

“Dunno,” Sam says with another shrug. “I see a lot of clowns in here.”

The commander’s mouth twitches with irritation. He straightens abruptly and turns to his little assistant friend. 

“Turn it on.”

The electricity seems to course through Sam’s very  _bones_. It lances straight through the metal, searing through the talus bone of his ankle and rocketing up his tibia and femur. 

Sam’s marrow feels like liquid electricity. All of him boils, quavers, burns. Even his eyeballs are hot.

The electricity abruptly shuts off.

“Seen Rogers lately?” the commander asks.

Sam twitches on the end of the chain. His teeth are still chattering from the 12 volts of electricity that flowed through him. 

“Shit, man,” he stammers through the involuntary clench of his teeth. “I can’t see anything right now.”

It’s true; the whole world is a gray haze, tinged with red.

The commander sighs. “Disappointing. But more for you than for me.”

They switch the car battery on again, turning up the voltage. This time, Sam can’t help but writhe. He thrashes from side to side, curling his body up. Hopelessly trying to escape the metal burning into his ankles and wrists. 

It’s useless. Anything Sam does is useless.

His wrists are bound to the small of his back. The single chain link against his vertebrae sings agony up his spine. If they keep this up, his skull just might rattle off his neck and drop to the ground.

Eventually, the electricity is too much. It paralyzes him. His back goes rigid. His whole body is just a tight clench of muscle. When Sam goes totally still, jaw locked so he can’t even scream, they turn the battery off.

“Where’s Cap?” the commander tries again. 

The air in the cell is dry, crackling with the scent of ozone and Sam’s singed skin. Sam inhales deeply, forcing staticky oxygen into his quivering lungs.

“The only cap I’ll give you,” Sam grits out, “Is a cap busted in your ass.”

The commander’s face goes blank; he doesn’t get it.

“Go ahead,” Sam says with a tight smile. “Turn on the battery while you work through that one. Might take you a while.”


	29. True Grit - Wooden Horse for Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA forces Steve to ride the wooden horse. This doesn't go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: stress positions, stun batons, non-explicit sexual violence

The first time they try to get Steve onto the horse, he takes out three HYDRA agents and a lab tech.

The second time, they magnicuff his wrists to his ankles and manage to wrangle him onto the wooden wedge. And Steve?

Steve is  _pissed_ about it.

“Do I look like John Wayne to you?” Steve is shaking, but not with the pain that drives between his legs. He’s shaking with rage.

“When the hell did you get a chance to see a John Wayne movie, Cap?” Rumlow says, rounding the horse to face Steve. The expression on his face is nothing short of overjoyed. 

Steve doesn’t know how he didn’t sense the sadism in this man early. How he went so long thinking Rumlow was his  _friend._

“ _True Grit_  is only two hours. I watched it on a plane.” If Steve keeps talking, he’s not focusing on the sharp edge of wood cutting into him. If he keeps talking, he can keep up the illusion that he’s in control.

If not in control of this situation, then at least in control of his body.

Rumlow lays a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I preferred the new version. You seen that one?”

He presses down, driving Steve’s body against the horse, and Steve forces himself not to wince. He imagines that his face is a mask made of stone. Unmovable. Impassable.

Steve shakes his head. “I’ll add it to the list.”

 

—

 

Hour three on the wooden horse, and Steve’s world has narrowed down to the point between his legs. The single, thin line that threatens to split him in two.

He clenches his thighs tight against the wood. He can’t leverage himself very high off of it, but just being able to do  _something_ helps keep his wits sharp.

_Sharp_ is a bad word to think of right now.

Rumlow’s watching Steve with an eagle eye. He notices quickly that Steve is lifting himself off the horse. 

“That’s cheating, Rogers,” Rumlow says and zaps Steve with a stun baton for his trouble. Right at the small of his back, against the base of his spine.

His back snaps straight, forcing his hips down. The grain of wood scrapes against him.

Involuntarily, Steve’s thighs seize up. The wood between his legs groans. Then, abruptly, the wooden horse cracks open. 

It splits in two, sending Steve crashing down to the concrete on his knees.

Steve refuses to cry out even when he hears the crunch of his fracturing patella. He shifts himself to sitting on one thigh, leaning against the rubble of the splintered wooden horse.

Rumlow stares at him open mouthed. Steve just crushed the wooden horse with his bare thighs. On accident.


	30. Wooden Horse for Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Tony's turn on the wooden horse. He rides it to spare Pete.

“It’s either you or the spider kid.”

Tony glances over to Peter, then back to the contraption in the middle of the room. Peter isn’t afraid, so much as confused. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Doesn’t know what that thing is.

Tony is a man of the world. He’s perused the internet. He knows what it is: 

It’s a wooden horse.

Tony sighs. He approaches it. 

“You know…There are German dungeons who pay big money for this kind of floor show.”

“Are you volunteering, Mr. Stark?”

Tony sucks the air through his teeth. He thinks, briefly, of Clint Barton. “Yeah, I guess call me Katniss. I volunteer as tribute.” 

Peter snickers from the corner. Tony’s attention snaps to him, as if he’d only just appeared. He’s not really a kid anymore; Peter is in college now, a young adult in his own right, but Tony’s stomach squirms thinking about the kid watching him ride the horse. 

He’ll always just think of him as that 15 year old with his suit stuffed in the ceiling. Posting youtube videos of himself catching buses. Awkward kid, but in the sweetest possible way.

Tony turns to their captor. “Can he at least leave the room? I’m trying to be a good role model. You know how it is.”

The man shakes his head. Just once. The suggestion of course being that he won’t warn him again. “Spider-Man stays.” He nods to the wooden horse. “Climb on top.”

Tony recoils, a little affronted. He’s already restrained by 50 shades of rope bondage. He’s lost the use of his hands. And the horse is at waist level.

Tony likes to think of himself as pretty damn fit for a man of his age. But  _flexible,_ he is not. 

His first attempt to simply swing his leg over goes horrendously. Tony loses his balance and falls to the floor. Then he has to roll onto his shoulder to try and get up.

Peter starts forward to help him.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Tony snaps. The kid freezes like he’s been electrified. Something in Tony’s voice spooked him and spooked him good. “I got it.”

He has to lean his chest and head against the side of the wedge in order to stabilize his body enough to crawl on. For a moment, Tony’s presses against the grain of the wood. Mortification heats under his skin.

Peter will never look at him the same way again.

“Do you get paid extra for this?” He says to their captor. “Is there some sort of humiliation bonus they throw in for henchmen?”

“Get up on the horse, Mr. Stark.”

Tony gets up on the horse. 

“Ooh, yeah, that’s…” There’s not really a good way to describe the simple torment of a piece of wood lodged tight between his legs. But yeah. “Not for me. Thanks, though. Now I know.”

Peter is wincing. Trying not to look at Tony, but every now and then his eyes flinch over. As if he can’t help himself.

“Does it…” Peter seems almost too afraid to ask the question. “Does it hurt?”

“Well,” Tony wheezes out. “I might have enjoyed it in my bachelor years, but I’m a married man now.” 

He rolls his ankles, trying to get higher up onto his toes.

It dawns on him that the wooden horse is at a very specific height. When Tony lifts up to the very highest point on his toes, he can just barely escape the sharp wedge. But it still grazes along the most painful parts.

This is intentional. This is planned. Someone  _measured_ the inseam of his leg and foot and  _created_ a wooden horse.

They never planned on putting Peter on the horse. It was always meant to be Tony.


	31. Force-feeding Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winter Soldier needs to eat. He refuses. Rumlow and Rollins force him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: food, calorie count, not good for those with an eating disorder

It’s Rollins who notices first. The three of them are sitting in the van, fueling up before the mission. Rollins is watching the Winter Soldier with a keen eye. Not that the Soldier is really doing anything. He’s just sitting there.

“The asset isn’t eating his ration bars,” Rollins notes to Rumlow. “Hasn’t eaten anything since Sunday.”

“Shit,” Rumlow says. He takes one last bite before setting his sandwich aside. “And you’re just telling me now?”

Rollins winces away from the spray of crumbs from Rumlow’s mouth. “Didn’t seem important before.”

“Well, great,” Rumlow grumbles, moving to the Soldier’s side of the van. He snaps his fingers at the Soldier to get his attention. “Hello, there. You awake?”

The Soldier’s eyes roll slowly up to Rumlow. He nods. “I am awake, Commander,” he affirms.

“Well, stop fucking around.” Rumlow picks up a ration bar and shoves it into his hands. “Eat. You’re going to make us late.”

The Soldier peels open the bar, holds it towards his mouth, and then stops. He sets the bar down onto his thigh. Shakes his head once.

The agents exchange a brief, wordless glance. Rollins raises a brow. Rumlow’s jaw twitches.

He snatches up the Soldier’s jaw in the tight clench of his hand. He digs his thumb and fingers into the hinges of his jaw, pressing hard enough to bruise a normal man. An actual man.

“Did you just say,  _no_ to me?”

The Soldier pauses. “I didn’t  _say_ it, sir…” There’s nothing in his tone to suggest backtalk; the asset is just stating a fact. He didn’t  _say_ no. He shook his head.

Rumlow strikes him across the face all the same. 

“You wanna try that again, smartass?”

The Solider blinks up at Rumlow. His fingers tense around the ration bar. “I can’t eat this, sir.”

“Why the fuck not?”

The Soldier looks back and forth between his handlers, as if confused. “I don’t know.”

“Eat the bar,” Rollins commands coolly. “Now.”

When nothing happens, Rumlow intervenes, “That’s an order, Soldier.”

The Soldier’s fingers tremble. His jaw quivers. Then, muscles in his neck straining against him, he  _shakes his head_.

“To hell with this,” Rumlow says. “Get those fucking trigger words.”

 

—

 

“…freight car.”

Rumlow closes the handling manual and looks over to Rollins. This is their first time using the code phrases on the Soldier. They aren’t totally sure how it works.

The Soldier stares at them blankly. Calm and compliant.

“Eat the ration bar,” Rumlow says at last.

The Soldier takes up the bar, peels back the wrapper, and takes a bite. Rollins sighs in relief, but Rumlow watches the Soldier closely. He chews, he chews, he chews…

…but he doesn’t swallow. 

“Soldier,” Rumlow says lowly, anger simmering just under the surface of his tone. “Swallow.”

The Soldier’s jaw slows, grinds side to side, and then stills. There’s a long stretch of a moment where nothing happens. Then, eyes locked on Rumlow, he does as commanded. If he didn’t know better, Rumlow would guess that the Soldier was  _scowling_ at him.

That pisses him off.

“Eat another one. In fact,” Rumlow cracks open cardboard box of ration bars. He dumps them onto the Soldier’s lap. “Eat all of them.”

Each bar is about two thousand calories. The Soldier has about fifteen on his thighs.

Slowly, slowly, the Soldier peels open a bar. Jaw quivering, eyes hard, he eats it. There’s a dry click in his throat when he swallows. The bob of his adam’s apple is a slow roll up and down his esophagus.

He picks up the next one, eyes still on Rumlow.

“The code phrases are supposed to be foolproof,” Rumlow says to Rollins. “What the fuck is this?”

“Looks like he’s obeying orders to me,” Rollins says with a shrug. “I mean, he’s eating, isn’t he?” 

The Soldier’s chest is heaving. Sweat beads at his temples and along his hairline. Each swallow seems hard fought. The Soldier is  _fighting_  this.

He finishes it. Eats another. Finishes it. Eats another.

Rumlow cranes his jaw. “Well, I’ll make sure he eats every single one. Then he can lick the crumbs off the floor.”


	32. Leashing Peter

The man binds Peter up by the throat, wrapping the leash around his neck several times until the tight squeeze makes it impossible to breathe. Impossible to think.

All of Peter’s world is bound up in this leash.

Peter whines, tries to squirm away from the coarse, thick strap that crushes against the bruises haloing his throat. They’ve weakened him, beaten him down. He can’t fight.

It’s enough of a fight to breathe. A battle to suck air down his larynx, and the air burns all the way down to his lungs.

The man drags Peter up to his feet by the leash. He stands numbly, knees knocking and head hung low. He has to fight the urge to tug the leash away from his throat.

“Look at me,” a man says.

Peter’s jaw quivers. But he obeys. He lifts his head.

“That’s better,” the man soothes, stroking back Peter’s hair. Hair that is limp with grease, unwashed for months. “Isn’t it better when you don’t struggle?”

Using his fingers, the man tugs loose the strands that have been trapped under the leash strap. Peter closes his eyes, loathing the touch, but leaning into it all the same. Human contact.

The leash is abruptly pulled tight again. Peter rasps, a horrible gurgling choke. He’s lifted up onto his tiptoes, and this time he does claw at the leash, trying to get the pressure off his trachea.

“Well? Is it better to struggle…” The man gives a sharp yank, dangling Peter on the line. “…or to obey?” The leash slackens. Not enough for Peter to breathe, but to ease the stabbing pain in his throat.

“Obey,” Peter wheezes. His eyes are watering uncontrollably. His lips feel numb and swollen. “It’s better to obey.”

The man drops Peter to the ground and he crumbles onto the concrete, gasping and glutting himself on oxygen.

“Good boy.”


	33. Razoring Bucky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumlow gives the Winter Soldier a shave. It doesn't go as planned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: blood, cutting, humiliation, forced nudity, self harm

“Hold still.”

The Winter Soldier doesn’t need to be told to sit still. He is  _always_ still. But whenever his handlers bring out a weapon, they feel the need to remind him.

For example, there was no reason to drag him to the showers and strip him naked just for a shave. But Commander Rumlow did it anyway. Did it in front of the whole team. And the Soldier understands why:

To keep him in his place.

The straight razor, a long and flat blade honed sharp, scrapes along the underside of his jaw. Where the skin is thin, stretched tight over the hollow of bone. Where the flesh is soft.

The Soldier is careful not to swallow. The Soldier is careful not to  _breathe._

Rumlow dips the razor into a cold stream of water to wash off the hair, then tucks the blade up against the bony ridge of his jaw. For a moment, the Soldier relaxes. He isn’t meant to enjoy anything (assets don’t feel enjoyment; they don’t feel at all) but these moments of grooming with his handler are a rare moment of calm. 

The Soldier is rarely taken care of. He closes his eyes and lets Rumlow guide his head from side to side, scraping off the scruff.

His eyes open when Rumlow rests a hand on his throat, cupping his palm against the Soldier’s adam’s apple. The touch is tender, especially when Rumlow strokes his thumb against the column of his windpipe.

Dread prickles up the Soldier’s spine.

“Having a nice time?” Rumlow croons into the Soldier’s ear. He drags the razor along an expanse of skin he’s already shaved, nicking him just under the ear.

The Soldier knows instantly that this is a trap. 

Admit that he’s having a nice time and admit that he’s broken his conditioning. Deny it, and he’s insulted Rumlow. There’s no right answer, no way out.

The smile on Rumlow’s face says that he knows this too. He grind the razor down against the Soldier’s trachea, working between the knobs of cartilage.

The blade slices open a thin line. Blood trickles down the Soldier’s throat and bare chest.

For some reason, the bright streaks of red surge  _anger_ through the Soldier. He didn’t ask for a shave. None of his missions require a shave. Rumlow clearly shaves the Soldier for his own enjoyment. 

What does it matter to Rumlow if the Soldier enjoys it too?

Acting on instinct, the Soldier flinches up to grasp the razor. Rumlow tries to yank it away, but the asset has the prosthetic hand curled over Rumlow’s grip on the handle. And the metal clench is unyielding

Rumlow struggles in earnest now, trying to get away, fearing the Soldier will attack him.

Watching his eyes, the Soldier drives the razor deeper into his own throat. When Rumlow realizes what he’s doing, he fights anew to drag the blade out of his hand. 

Getting injured by the Soldier is one thing. Allowing the Soldier to damage himself is another.

The Soldier presses his flesh hand against the blade of the razor, stabilizing it against his own throat. The straight razor sharp on both sides like a machete. It slices open the skin of his palm, digging in deep as the Soldier presses harder. The blood of his hand mingles with the blood dripping from his neck.

The asset gurgles around his severed larynx, blood bubbling. He doesn’t smile, but doesn’t look away either. 

“I’m having a nice time now, Commander.”


	34. Metal Wires for Steve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rumlow wraps Steve in metal wire then stun batons him.
> 
> Requested by the gorgeous goblinchild.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: bondage, forced nudity, electricity

They wind the metal wire up along his calves and thighs. The wire twines around his whole body. Around his bare hips. Spiraling up his torso to bind his arms to his waist.

They even wrap the wire around his throat. Between his teeth. Over his eyes so he can’t even open them.

Each time Steve squirms, the thin metal cuts into his skin. It’s worst against his throat, where the wire lacerates between his tracheal cartilage. Even grinding his jaw or swallowing bulges his neck enough to drive the wire in. 

And now that the skin has been cut open, the wire rubs against the open wound.

“You look good like this, Cap.” Rumlow’s voice feels like static over Steve’s already hyper-sensitive skin. His boot rolls Steve over onto his front. “And we’ve already discussed the ass.”

“Seems like you got a crush,” Steve quips.

Rumlow’s boot lifts from the small of Steve’s back. He walks down towards his feet. Steve’s toes curl in when he feels the blunt plastic of the stun baton prod into the arch of his foot.

“You could say that.” Briefly, Rumlow rests his hand on Steve’s calf. Then he lifts it.

The stun baton sends a wave of electricity up Steve’s body. This, he expected. This, he is accustomed to.

What he’s not quite prepared for? The way the electricity follows the spiral of wire up his body. And when his whole body snaps taut, the charged wire digs under his skin and electrifies his blood.

He’s lit up from the inside.

The stun baton is abruptly shut off and Steve is left huffing into the concrete. His eyeballs are burnt under the lids. His whole body tremors against the metal wire. One cramped bundle of muscle.

“Go to hell,” Steve rasps.

“Oh, Steve,” Rumlow says, voice soft enough to be soothing. “We  _are_ in hell.”

He turns the stun baton back on.


	35. Tony in Metal Wires + Car Trunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is trapped in a car trunk.
> 
> Requested by the intrepid 3-thousand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: claustrophobia, abduction, blood

Tony comes awake in fragments. First, the headache sinks into his temples. The heat follows–a suffocating, close heat. Like he’s been in the Iron Man suit in the sun for too long.

There’s movement underneath him. His body rolls and hits something hard. Metallic.

Tony’s eyes fly open. He’s in the trunk of a car.

He tries to twist up onto his hands, but when he does, thin pressure slices against his wrists. Same story for his ankles and knees.

Tony gets a good look at himself. They’ve bound him with wire. Metal wire directly over his skin. Just great.

His first instinct is to work his hands free, but that plan goes south quickly. The wire cuts into the skin and grinds between his scaphoid and radius bones. 

Tony winces. 

Big pain–blunt impact, canon blaster to the chest, a blaze of fire, falling several stories–that kind of pain Tony can handle. It’s the small pain, the irritating pain that niggles at his psyche…that’s the shit that really hurts.

That’s where all supervillains go wrong, isn’t it? They hurt Tony enough to piss him off, but not to incapacitate him.

Tony wriggles in the car trunk to get his hands against the inside of the bumper. He feels along the metal wall of the trunk until he finds the plastic cap that covers the tail lights.

Bingo.

Next, he twists himself around and gets his feet against the tail light cover. For the first time, Tony is glad that he’s a bit on the shorter side. A taller man wouldn’t fit laterally in this trunk.

He bends his knees up to his chest and kicks out the headlight. Bright light and air rush into the trunk. The tail light skitters to the asphalt.

Now the tough part.

Tony must drag his hand through the tight loop of wire.  _Must._ He chooses his left, the less dexterous hand. Twisting his hand back and forth, back and forth only gets it a few centimeters free. 

Tony takes a deep breath and hauls his wrist against the wire. Tears sting his eyes. His other hand quivers. 

The metal scrapes against the swell of his wrist, flaying off a thin layer of skin. 

But once the blood starts to flow, it slicks his wrist enough to lubricate the rest of the way. His hand slides free, and Tony thrusts it out through the hole where the tail light was. He blindly reaches to find the latch from the outside.

The truck pops open and now Tony really doesn’t have time to waste. Before the villains can stop the car, Tony drags his body over the ledge of the trunk and rolls out onto the street.

Big ouch. 

His body cracks against the concrete and rolls. Cars swerve to avoid him, a blaze of honking and screeching tires. Road burn sears open his bare arms and face. It’s going to be hell picking the gravel out of his skin.

Tony relishes the drama. It’s better than suffocating in the trunk of a car.


	36. Bucky in the Ice Bath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA gives Bucky an ice bath.
> 
> Requested by the refined magicaltyphoonlady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: forced exercise, ice torture, hypothermia

If anything breaks Bucky Barnes, it won’t be this. 

But he hates it all the same.

First, they force him to run. Hours and hours until he collapses. Then they scoop him back up and make him run some more.

Only once his body is burning, do they let him stop. Once his veins pumping battery acid, and his capillary veins scream wide open, and salt slick over every inch of skin. Once he’s exhausted and alight with exercise, only then do they let him stop.

And then it’s straight to the ice bath.

Bucky has heard the doctors chatter about the bath. He knows that they keep the bath at ten degrees celsius, and will keep adding ice until it dips all the way down to zero. Down to freezing. He knows they are studying the benefits of the ice bath on his over-exerted body. He knows they take notes.

He also knows that every damn Soviet in the building likes to watch him take a bath.

The first two minutes are always the hardest. When the shock of cold over his hot body clamps his jaw shut and contracts every muscle in his body. It’s hard to focus on anything else, hard to remember that there was a time before the cold and there will be a time after it, too.

The first time the Soviets forced Bucky into the ice water, he fought his way out within minutes. Now, he sits stock still, waiting for the stinging in his limbs to turn to tingling and the tingling to turn to a quiet numb over his whole body.

Now, Bucky squares his jaw and blinks slowly. Bracing himself as if to fight the cold itself.

The Soviets usually only keep him sealed in the ice for half an hour. And usually, they leave him more or less alone while he’s in the bath.

Today is different.

One of the Soviets grasps him by the hair and forces his head underwater. The cold, previously bearable, ramps up to agony once his head is submerged.

In his panic, Bucky inhales ice water. His body seems to freeze from the inside. His lungs seize up.

He comes up spluttering, spitting out ice chips and choking for air. “The fuck?” he manages to ask before he’s driven back down into the cold water. They let him up a moment later, just to let him feel the warmth of the dry air, then drive him back down again.

Up and down.

Up and down.

Then they hold him under for longer. One minute. Then two. Bucky fights against the hand that pins him to the bottom of the basin. Full body thrashes that slosh water over the edges of the basin.

More ice is dumped into the water while he’s submerged. In the confusion of cold and hypoxia, Bucky forgets where he is. Who holds him under, and why. 

He feels hot suddenly, unbearably hot. On fire.

The hand releases him and Bucky bobs to the surface. He can’t make sense of the circle of men around him. He can’t make sense of any of it. Not the men. Not their snickering. Not the burning heat of his body despite the ice floating in the tub water.

“Where’s Steve?” he chatters through his teeth. “I need Steve.”

Bucky doesn’t know that Steve is frozen too.


	37. Peter in Metal Wires

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter is bound up and suspended by metal wires.
> 
> Requested by the discerning pythagoreanpentagram

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: bondage, suspension blood, cutting, implied forced nudity, hydrogen peroxide, wounds

Peter has been bound up in these wires for so long, he can’t remember what it felt like to move. How it feels to extend his arms above his head or stretch the slight bend of his knees.

Parallel to the floor and face down, Peter is hung from three metal wires: his wrists, his waist, his thighs. More wires bind him into perfect stillness (ankles, torso, elbows) but it’s these three wires that support his weight.

He’s bound so tightly that even  _breathing_  cuts the wire through his flesh. When his muscles twitch, they are lacerated on the wire. 

Imagine the pain of being suspended by them.

The metal wires have sliced him open everywhere they wrap around his skin. Painful in it’s own right, but Peter recovers quick. His flesh has begun to partially heal around the metal. Scabs that suck the wire into the dermal layer of skin.

The door bangs open suddenly, and Peter lifts his head to see who approaches. When he does, it shifts his weight to his waist and thighs. The wire sinks in. And his body accommodates this, welcoming the wires deeper.

“Hey, man,” Peter croaks. “Wanna hang out with me for a little bit?” He coughs. The spasm of his ribcage presses against the wire that binds his elbows to his sides. “Get it? Because I’m hang–”

The man uncaps a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and dumps it over Peter’.

The lateral incisions froth and bubble wherever the peroxide makes contact with blood. It’s a gruesome sight, even just looking down at himself. Peter’s whole body burns.

Though he knows it’ll make it worse, Peter thrashes. The metal wire wrapped around his chest has already cut through the thin layer of muscle there. As he squirms, the wire grinds directly against Peter’s sternum.

The pain that lances down his abdomen is sharp, immediate. Peter stills, panting and crying. His head drops forward. He can’t muster any energy or fighting spirit to lift it.

“Shit!” he exclaims to the floor. “That shit  _burns,_ man.”

“You’re welcome,” the man grunts, already making his way to the door. “Didn’t want you to get an infection.”


	38. Tick Tock - Lock + Key for Tony

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds a key in his stitched up mouth. He needs to get it out to save Peter.
> 
> Requested by i-blame-my-love-of-whump-on-ryan who gets it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: mutilation, mouth horror, drowning

Tony wakes up. His mouth is a furled gash of agony. His lips twitch, a reflex to talk, and there are pinpricks of resistance along his upper and lower lips. He can’t open his mouth.

Hand shaking, Tony lifts his fingers to feel along his lips. They find dimpled pockets. Dried blood. Thread. His mouth, it’s been…

It’s been sewn shut.

And there’s more. There’s a metallic weight against his tongue. A flat shape, that he presses against the roof of his mouth. A rounded top, ridges almost like teeth…

It’s a  _key,_ Tony realizes with some surprise. He glances around his cell, but there’s no lock accessible to him. Just a cot, sink, and toilet.

Tony shifts the key into the pocket between his lips and teeth. Safe keeping. He doesn’t want to swallow it.

 

—

 

The key’s purpose becomes more evident several days later…when they drag one Peter Parker into Tony’s cell.

The kid is all relief at the sight of Tony. It makes his heart squeeze. Especially when Tony makes out the bruises that ring Peter’s eyes, the rug burn against the high arch of his cheekbone.

“Mr. Stark,” Peter says in a rush. “You’re alive! I thought–Well, these guys told me when I asked to talk to you? They told me you couldn’t talk and I thought…”

Usually Tony would have cut Peter off by now. The kid spirals, then gradually quiets when Tony says nothing. It dawns on him in increments that something is wrong.

“Mr. Stark?”

“Hm?” Tony hums, aiming for light. But it’s been a while since he made a sound. The hum comes out garbled, fractured.

It’s then that Peter sees what’s happened to his mouth. Tony tries to smile, but the effect must be gruesome. Peter’s head snaps to the side.

Shit.

Peter has distracted Tony from the activity in the corner of his cell, where they’ve hooked a hose up to the sink. They’re filling a glass tank with water. A glass tank large enough to fit Peter.

He can’t warn the kid. 

They lift Peter up and drop him into the glass tank. Bless his heart, the kid squirms and puts up a good fight, but there’s too many of them. They force him into the glass tank, and shut the top over him.

They fasten the lid closed with a lock. A padlock.

Tony parts his teeth and lets the key fall onto his tongue. He allows himself a moment to feel morbid. The taste of metal is so similar to that of blood.

The tank is filling rapidly, and Peter presses his face up high where there’s still air left in the tank. He’s already gasping, more out of fear than anything else. Tony can’t remember if the kid can swim or not, but within seconds it doesn’t matter. 

Within seconds, the tank is completely filled. Peter floats in the water, banging against the lid.

“Tick tock, Mr. Stark,” one of the men says.

If Tony could talk, he’d have a great zinger about preferring Vine. 

There’s nothing sharp in this room. Nothing to cut open the threads and let loose the key. Too late to try to outsmart Jigsaw over here. Tony can’t see any alternative. 

It’s the sacrifice play, then.

Eyes locked on Peter, using him as an anchor against the pain, Tony works his fingers between his lips. They twitch against him, squirming like creatures with their own will as Tony forces them apart.

The jagged slice of thread through the soft tissue of his lips is unbearable. The pain is too close to the other sense organs in his head. His eyes and nose water. Still, he forces his lips apart.

His tongue draws back to block his throat. If Tony swallowed the key now, he’d never forgive himself.

Finally, finally he pries his upper lip loose from a stitch. Then another. This is enough room, just barely, and he pushes the key out from his lips with his tongue.

Adrenaline surges through his body once the key is in his hand. He charges towards the tank, where Peter has both hands pressed against the glass. He jams the key in the lock, and Peter flings the top off the aquarium.

Though he’s gasping for air, quaking with fright, Tony seizes Peter by the head and presses their foreheads together.

“Scared me,” Tony mumbles through his stitched up mouth.

“Sorry, Mr. Stark.”


	39. Peter and a Hammer + Nails

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A doctor nails Peter's arm to the table. He gets a lesson in anatomy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: blood, mutilation, hand horror, medical horror, broken bones

“No.” Peter shakes his head back and forth, entire arm wracked with tremors. He tries to fight off the doctor’s hold, but can’t. “No, please. Please. No, no.”

She props the nail upright against the back of his hand. The sharp tip dimples the skin between the bones, where the skin is thin and the veins are dense. 

Peter squirms, thrashes. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want it. Oh god, he  _doesn’t want it._

“Hold still,” the doctor says. “Or I’ll make you.”

“Please–”

She taps the hammer against the nail and it sinks into the carpal ligament. Blood squirts from the entry wound. She taps the hammer again, driving it all the way down. Through his hand. Into the wooden table below.

Peter stares at it open mouthed. Shocked. He gives an instinctual jerk against the nail and, of course, finds his hand is pinned to the table. No, not pinned. 

_Nailed._

“There,” the doctor says. “Now you won’t move.”

Humming, she picks up another nail. “I hear you’re interested in the sciences, Peter.” 

Peter nods, his eyes are still on the nail in his hand. On the blood pooling between his fingers.

She squeezes the compact muscle that leads to his thumb, finding the ridge of it. “This is your brachioradialis. It is one of the four muscles innervated–that is  _stimulated–_ by the radial nerve.” 

She strokes her thumb down Peter’s arm. Wherever she touches, his hair raises. Thanks, spidey-senses. Peter’s aware his arm is in danger.

“Of those four muscles, the brachioradialis is the only muscle to receive direct stimulation from the radial nerve.” She props the next nail against this muscle, an inch below his elbow. She releases his arm and lifts the hammer. “Do you know what that means, Peter?”

Peter shakes his head. His eyes stream. “Please don’t.”

“That means this will hurt. A lot.” She swings the hammer down with full force.

She swings the hammer down…and  _misses_. 

The hammer lands on Peter’s arm and his bone snaps below the blunt impact. Peter was braced for another nail, not a broken bone. He calls out in surprise, voice cracking over his shock.

“Oops,” the doctor says. “That was your ulna. Let’s try again.”

She doesn’t give Peter a chance to recover. This time she hits the nail and drives it into his brachio-whatever. It sinks all the way in, nailing Peter’s whole forearm to the table.

The doctor takes notes. Peter has the chance to wince and sob and press his other hand over the wound. His arm twitches, overwhelmed and wracked with pain. 

When she’s done, she sets her notepad aside and picks up the hammer again. “Put your other arm on the table, Peter. Palm up.”

Peter’s arm jerks away, clutched towards his chest. He shakes his head. No. No, he won’t. He can’t. No.

She sighs and strikes the nail in Peter’s forearm again. The head was already flat against his skin. The hammer impact drives it even deeper, haloing the nail with a dark bruise.

“Arm down. Palm up. Now, Peter.”

Shaking, Peter does as he’s told. He extends his arm.


	40. Loki in a Laundry Dryer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is put in a laundry dryer.

It isn’t a struggle to get Loki into the industrial sized machine. He’s confused by it, but not necessarily alarmed. It’s just a metal contraption. 

They close the door behind him, and Loki makes himself comfortable in the round drum. He props his feet up on one of the metal fins, rests his head against the other. And waits.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

The metal drum begins to rotate. Loki is quick to brace his arms and legs against the sides. He turns in a slow circle.

Dry, hot air rushes through the holes in the drum. For a few turns, it isn’t so bad. Just warm. Then the air thins, the heat ramps up to unbearable. Sweat beads and drips down his temples. Loki isn’t built for this kind of heat. He swelters.

And still, the drum spins, taking Loki with it. Head over feet. Head over feet. Head over feet.

Eventually, the metal begins to burn his palms and elbows. The back of his neck. Everywhere bare skin brushes metal burns. Big, distended blisters rise in circles.

Loki flinches away from the heat. The moment he does, he is sent tumbling through the drum. He can’t catch his body, can’t brace himself. He’s at the mercy of the spin.

His body bangs against hot metal, bruising like a ripe fruit wherever he lands. The movement and lack of air makes his head swim. Outside, the world whirls by in a haze.

But Loki can see a face. Someone is watching him. A spectator to his suffering.

Outraged, Loki bangs his fist against the glass door. Just once; it’s all he can manage before his body his hurled down again.


	41. Bucky in a Car Trunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winter Soldier is put in the car trunk when it fails a mission. Steve doesn't understand.
> 
> Requested by the lovely dancingplague.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: isolation, broken bones, humiliation

Mission accomplished, but just barely. Sam sags against Steve for support as they stagger towards the car. As they walk, Steve catalogues Sam’s myriad injuries. His fractured ribs are the main problem. They need to get him to medical. Stat.

He gets Sam into the passenger seat and turns around to locate Bucky. Bucky, who has unlatched the trunk and has one foot inside.

Steve is dumbfounded. “What are you doing?”

Bucky’s eyes drift down to the trunk. He has one hand on the deck lid. He blinks. “I don’t know.”

 

—

 

When the asset fails a mission, they make him ride in the trunk on the way home.

In the large van, this isn’t much of a punishment. The asset isn’t totally separated from the team. Sitting on the hard metal, knees tucked up to his chest…it’s almost peaceful.

It’s only the solitude. Being left with the knowledge that he’s no better than cargo. That hurts a little, and the asset doesn’t know why.

 

—

 

The smaller trunks are worse. 

When the asset is forced to squeeze his large body amongst the gear, and he’s sealed in the dark for hours and hours.

It’s like cryo, but without the cold. And without the sweet release of unconsciousness. The asset  _loathes_ it.

In the large truck, the asset can look out the back window. In the cramp of the smaller trunk, the asset is left with himself.

With his failure.

 

—

 

The asset has really fucked up this time. Two members of the STRIKE team are dead. Worse, the asset has allowed himself to become damaged: his left leg is broken at the tibia, he’s got a spiral radial fracture, and his metal arm hangs loose off his shoulder socket. 

Lieutenant Rollins is pissed.

Not many people on the STRIKE team  _can_  lift the asset, much less  _would,_ but Rollins hauls the asset up by the armpits and tosses him into the trunk. The asset lands against an assault rifle and the weight of his body snaps the barrel in two.

“Fuck you,” Rollins spits. He slams the trunk closed, but the asset isn’t small enough.

The lid knocks against the asset’s temple hard enough to daze him. Everything spins, and the asset tries to make himself smaller. Curls up into himself. Wishes he was smaller. 

He doesn’t understand why he has to be so big.

Rollins tries the lid again, but the asset still doesn’t fit. Growling, red in the face, Rollins stomps his foot down over the asset’s ribs. The ensuing crunch signals broken ribs, maybe even a punctured lung.

But it works. He crams the asset into the trunk deep enough to fit. The deck lid closes, sealing the asset in the dark.

 

—

 

Steve works his lower lip between his teeth. Bucky has retracted his foot, but he still stares into the trunk. Unsure.

“Okay,” Steve says, calculating. “Do you, uh, want to ride in the cabin? With us?”

Bucky’s cradling his ribcage, maybe he broke them too. Eyes on the trunk, he asks, “Will Sam be okay?”

“He’s just fine, Buck. Might even appreciate the vacation.”

Bucky hesitates, but he nods. “Thanks, Steve,” he says and crawls into the backseat.


	42. Eddie and a Lock + Key

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie must cut a key out of his stomach to save Venom.
> 
> Requested by a very kind anon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: burning, (forced) self-harm, evisceration, mutilation, disemboweling, guts

They turn Eddie and Venom’s unresponsive body onto their back. A hand delves into the pliant squish of Venom’s black mass, releasing something inside Eddie’s stomach.

The hand retracts. A moment passes, then Venom is abruptly ripped from Eddie’s body. It’s like being peeled. He screams and blacks out. 

Whatever is inside Eddie’s stomach stays in there.

When he wakes up, Venom is being held in a glass chamber above an unlit bunsen burner. Eddie climbs up onto his feet, expecting the worst.

He presses his hand against the glass, feeling the flex of Venom inside. It laps against the sides of the chamber, wriggling towards Eddie. And Eddie longs to dip his hand inside, to just  _touch_ Venom again. 

But there’s a padlock securing the lid.

“What is this?” he asks the ring of lab techs outside their cell. The glare of the glass obstructs their faces. They are just hazy figures in the dark, watching him. Watching them. Writing down their observations.

Something slides in through the slot where trays of food are usually delivered. Eddie turns towards it, one hand still pressed against the glass with Venom.

It’s a knife.

“There’s a key in your stomach, Mr. Brock,” a lab tech says over the intercom. “You have three minutes before we ignite the bunsen burner.”

Eddie closes his eyes, fist curling against the glass. He wishes he could speak to Venom right now. Longs to know what it’s thinking.

On his own, Eddie walks over and picks up the knife. It’s not very big. Just a paring knife. The kind he would use to slice apples. Eddie feels the skin of his stomach, trying to gage how deep he’ll need to cut in order to get the key out.

It doesn’t help that Eddie has a hard layer of abdominal muscle he’ll need to slice through. With a paring knife no longer than his palm.  _Fuck._

“Two minutes, Mr. Brock,” the voice over the intercom warns.

“Yeah, okay,” Eddie snipes, peevish. “I’m working on it!”

He holds the tip of the knife against his stomach, which is convulsing in fear. He can do this. It’ll be quick. Once he has Venom out of the chamber, it’ll fix it. Venom can fix whatever he does to himself.

“Aim lower,” the intercom suggests. “About two inches.”

Eddie shifts the blade lower and takes a deep breath. He drives the knife into himself with both hands, forcing himself to go as deep as he can. Even when the hilt hits his skin, he pushes in deeper.

Now the hard part. He’s already panting with pain, unable to catch his breath.

“Slice upwards, Mr. Brock.”

He does as instructed because he doesn’t know what else to do. With the smooth paring knife, Eddie makes an incision large enough to sink three fingers into himself. Then his whole hand.

In its chamber, Venom squirms.

Eddie drags the knife back out of himself and the sudden gush of blood surprises him. There’s a lot of it, more than he expected, and it doesn’t seem to stop.

“One minute, Mr. Brock.”

Eddie can’t catch his breath, can barely force his trembling fingers into the laceration to feel around his guts for the key. When he finds it, he laughs with relief.

The laughter compresses the muscles in his gut. More blood spills out.

“Thirty seconds, Mr. Brock. Still need to unlock the chamber.”

Fuck. Even lifting his arm strains his abdominal wound. But he does it. He does it for Venom. And when it is released, it flows straight into him. 

_My darling, what did they make you do?_

Venom absorbs his pain and shares it with him. Eddie is weak with relief. He allows himself to be cradled, supported, cared for.

“Interesting,” the lab tech says over the intercom. “We’ll have to run more tests.”


	43. Billionaire Zoo - Tony in a Tank

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is sealed in a tank.

Two men stride into the room, and Tony leans his temple against the glass of the tank. One of them, Tony recognizes as the muscle of this little ransom operation. The other man, he’s new.

“Selling tickets now?” Tony asks Muscles. “Got yourself a little billionaire zoo going?”

He is largely ignored.

Tony is getting used to the glass tank. The main obstacle was never the discomfort–the square edges, the hard panes of glass–but the complete lack of privacy.

At any given moment, he’s subject to observation. There’s no place to hide in an all glass tank. No place to be alone.

Muscles feeds a hose into the top of the tank. The green rubber plugs up the quarter-sized hole that provides Tony all his air. Never a good sign, that.

“Thank you,” he tells the two men as water begins to fill the tank. “I desperately needed a bath.”

 

—

 

It takes two hours to fill the bottom inch of the tank. Tony does the rough math, guessing a container of this size–large enough that Tony can stand in it and not reach the top–is about 200 gallons.

At this rate, it’ll take the whole day to fill the tank.

Tony sits while he can, letting the water slosh over his feet and legs, while his captors watch.

“If you’re hoping for a synchronized swimming show, you won’t find it here,” Tony snarks. “I don’t have the gams.”

 

—

 

The water catches up to him. First, forcing him into standing. And then, when he is lifted off his feet, Tony must tread water.

And he must tread water for hours.

Hours and hours while the water sends him closer and closer to the lid. Tony doesn’t have a plan for what happens when he gets to the lid.

For now, he treads.

 

—

 

Above all things, Tony is a survivalist. When the tank is full enough, he knows to let his body float at the surface when he can, occasionally kicking his feet to keep his lower half suspended. 

But for as tall as the tank is, it isn’t very wide. Tony can’t fully spread out into a full deadman’s float. Keeping himself adrift requires exertion. Constant, unwavering exertion.

And Tony is beat. Wouldn’t it be easier to just…

 

—

 

He’s nearly two feet (several hours) from the top of the lid when he just gives up. If he had anything left in him, he’d use it to keep treading. But he’s exhausted. It’s over. He’s going to drown.

Tony lets himself slip under the water. And for a moment, there is a relief in the floating. A relief in letting himself just…drift away.

He thinks of the half-finished nanotech on his workbench. He thinks of the replacement part he still needs to install in Dum-E.

He thinks of Pepper.

Apparently, the best way to drown to death is to inhale the water, but Tony can’t quite bring himself to do it. Each time he braces his lungs for the inhale, something stops him.

Instead, Tony finds himself opening his eyes. His captors stand on the other side of the glass. Their faces are blurry underwater, but Tony can make out their expressions:

Grinning. The both of them. Thinking that they’ve won.

Tony can’t stand that.

Without thinking it through, Tony thrusts his fists against the glass. His knuckles crack against the glass, breaking the bones in his hand…but the glass cracks too.

Why didn’t Tony think of this earlier? There’s a reason he’s always getting himself into these kinds of situations.

Full of new (and vindictive) energy, Tony presses his palms to one side of the tank and thrusts his feet as hard as he can into the cracked glass. The tank wall splinters further, a web of broken glass spreading bigger.

Tony can see the surprise on his captors’ faces. The way they stumble back and away from him. Tony Stark is only the Iron Man suit. Tony Stark is supposed to be useless without it.

Water trickles from the cracks in the glass. Tony grins and kicks the glass again.


	44. Got Any Tape? - Bucky and Photographs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HYDRA torments Bucky with a photograph of Steve.
> 
> Requested by the brave black-polarf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: tooth extraction, humiliation, forced nudity, cold cell torture, electricity

“Don’t,” Bucky says, turning his head to the side. “I don’t want to see it.”

They’ve just finished yanking the rotten teeth from his gums, leaving bloody caverns where the roots of his molars used to be. Bucky feels those empty gaps with his tongue, now. If he probes deep enough, he swears he can feel a new tooth growing in. 

Impossible; those were his adult molars. He must just be feeling the bony ridge of his jaw.

Bucky is gripped by the hair and someone else clenches his jaw so he can’t jerk his head away. The photograph is thrust into his face, and Bucky snaps his eyes shut instantly. When he feels the photograph brush his nose, he squeezes his eyes shut tighter.

That is, until a Soviet digs his fingers against Bucky’s eyelids and pries them open. Then he’s forced to look.

It’s a newer photograph. Taken of him and Steve after all that super soldier serum stuff. After Steve had rescued the 107th.

Bucky is cracking some sort of godawful goofball grin at the camera. Steve’s head is just barely turned towards him, but his eyes are angled directly towards Bucky. Steve is smiling. 

Everything good and sweet and soft in this world is also in Steve’s smile. 

Bucky’s heart flings itself at his ribcage, towards the photograph. Towards Steve.

_Where the hell is Steve?_

“Get that the fuck out of my face,” Bucky spits. Literally  _spits_  blood from his gums. He’s missing a couple front teeth, too. The spit isn’t intentional. Neither is the lisp.

Some of his blood gets on the photograph. Right over the star on Steve’s chest.

The Soviets frown. One of them lifts a camera to his face. Bucky tries to jerk his head away, but there are three hands holding him in place. The camera flashes and a picture is taken.

They don’t show it to him, but Bucky can imagine what he looks like: hair pulled up by the scalp, eyes pried open, jaw bruised from tooth extraction. 

Crying.

 

—

 

The next time they bring the photograph into the cell, Bucky clambers for it. He is naked, wet, and nearly hypothermic from the Russian cold. He never knew cold like this was possible.

It’s like being dead. But painful. Death isn’t supposed to be painful, is it?

When Bucky’s fingers brush the edge of the photograph, a Soviet snatches it away. “Trade,” he insists.

Bucky winces. He saw that one of the Soviets brought a camera in with them. He knows what he wants.

They spray him down with more icy water from the hose before they take the picture. Water fills his nose while the cold seizes his chest, so he can’t catch his breath. His chest heaves and he braces himself on his remaining arm, trying to gulp cold air into his cold lungs.

The Soviet takes a picture at a distance. So the camera catches the protrusion of his spine along the skin of his back. So the camera catches his missing arm.

The teeth grew back. His arm didn’t.

When they finally give Bucky the photograph, they let him hold it. His wet fingers dimple the paper, but he doesn’t care. He wants to clutch the image close. He wants to cradle it to his chest.

How can a cold like this exist when Steve’s smile is so warm?

A Soviet rips it from his trembling fingers, and they leave abruptly. He puts it in the same file where he’s stored the picture of Bucky. Where the other photographs are kept.

In the dark solitude of the cell, Steve’s smile begins to fade from his memory. Faster than it faded last time. Bucky wishes he never even saw the damn photograph.

But Bucky also wishes he had never been born.

 

—

 

The last time they show Bucky Barnes the photograph, he is strapped to an electric chair.

They course electricity through his temples for minutes at a time. Until he can’t form linear thoughts. Until he can’t remember the order of his number. Until he can’t remember his name.

Between rounds of electricity, they show Bucky the photograph. He recognizes Steve, they zap him. He recognizes Steve, they zap him. He recognizes Steve, he recognizes him, he recognizes…

Then he doesn’t.

 

—

 

The first time they show the Winter Soldier the photograph, there is much trepidation about the reveal. 

He’s with the Americans now, who don’t know as much about the Soldier’s conditioning. So, they’re always running tests. Always curious about the Soldier’s abilities…and his psyche.

The Americans strap him to the chair–the one that charges his head with lightning–before they’ll show him the photograph. Everyone is tense. Everyone is hushed for this special event.

The Soldier is mostly just confused.

It’s Commander Rumlow who gets to do the honors. He stands at a distance from the Soldier when he lifts the image into his vision.

The Soldier doesn’t understand all the fuss. It’s just a black and white photograph of two men, standing very close to each other, and smiling.

“Well?” Rumlow asks, eyes searching the Soldier’s face. “What do you think?”

The Soldier has never seen either of them before. He lifts his eyes to his commander. “Are they my next target?”

There’s a murmur amongst the Americans in the room. Rumlow smiles, big and relieved. Endorphins rush through the Soldier; he’s pleased his handler.

Rumlow cleanly rips the photograph in two. He shows the Soldier the half with the light-haired man. The one with the sunshine smile.

“He is.”

 

—

—

 

“Hey,” Bucky says, coming into Steve’s room without knocking. “Sam and I were thinking we needed some more…”

Steve startles and slaps a folder shut, crowding his big body around it protectively. Bucky trails off. Something about that folder prickles his memory.

He approaches slowly, going for casual. “So, uh, whatcha got there, buddy?”

Steve winces and opens the folder again. He knows when he’s been caught redhanded. “I dunno if you should see these, Buck.”

“If they’re of me, I don’t know if  _you_  shoulda seen them,” Bucky counters and approaches anyway. He’s seen the footage of the experiments. He’s seen the doctor’s notes. The facts of his trauma aren’t new to him.

But these photographs are.

“Huh,” Bucky says, lifting up a polaroid of himself dangling by one foot. 

In the photograph, he’s naked, but not as naked as the bare fear in his eyes. That look is shameful, makes him want to crumple into himself. He shuffles to the next photograph. In this one, he won’t even face the camera. Bucky is just a huddle in the corner of the cell.

“Buck, you don’t have to–”

“Shut it. You got to. I get to.”

Missing teeth, bruises, broken bones…the usual.

It’s the torn photograph at the bottom of the pile that gives Bucky pause. There’s blood and water marks on the photograph, and that makes a lot of sense to him. But he doesn’t remember how it got ripped in half.

It’s a good picture of him and Steve. The kind of photograph the Smithsonian (and the internet) would eat up. The kind worth framing and saving.

Bucky’s thumb traces the curve of Steve’s  _gee whiz!_ smile. He lifts his eyes to the real Steve, who is not smiling. Who looks ravaged. Split in two along with the photograph of them.

Bucky can’t stand a look like that on a guy like Steve. “Got any tape?”


	45. Leashing Wanda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wanda is choked with a leash so Pietro will comply with experiments.
> 
> Requested by a really, very lovely anon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: choking, humiliation, forced exercise

They hurt her so that Pietro will comply with the experiments. And they do it so he can watch her struggle. 

That’s always the worst part. Being watched. Her brother’s eyes on her. Sensing his sympathy pour off him in miserable waves. 

Pietro is the worst part. The leash comes in second.

Even Wanda has to admit that it’s a good strategy. While she’s dangling by the throat–choking and scrambling to ease the pressure around her trachea–her brother is on the treadmill. Running. Sprinting.

Today they’re testing his endurance. And Wanda’s.

They’ve ramped up the speed so high Pietro’s legs are a pale blur below him. He’s fighting to keep up, entire body straining. But his eyes are on Wanda’s bluing face.

“She doesn’t look so good, does she?” Herr Strucker says to Pietro. 

He’s the one holding the other end of the leash, and he raises Wanda higher in the air as he speaks. Her toes lift off the ground and her entire weight crushes against her throat.

Wanda tries not to splutter, but can’t help the ghastly coarse rasp of her inhales. The way they sound scraped through her windpipe. Her lungs feel shriveled inside her.

“Fifteen more miles, Pietro,” Strucker continues. “Aren’t twins supposed to protect each other? Are you protecting her?”

Wanda can’t bear the look on Pietro’s face. Her eyes roll back into their sockets, tucked away and flickering. She searches herself for that prickle of magic, but can’t find it. 

She doesn’t fight for air anymore; there’s no point.

“Maybe I should strap this leash to that treadmill. See if Wanda can run any faster than you.”

With a yelp, Pietro hits the hundred mile mark. Wanda knows because Strucker laughs and abruptly drops her to the floor.

The leash was fastened in a slipknot around her bare throat. And that slipknot is snagged on the rough strap of the leash. Wanda’s fingers dig under the clench of the knot around her throat, gasping for air once she gets it loose.

Loose is all she can manage though, and the leash is still wrapped around her neck when Strucker gives a tug to his end of it. 

Even a brief tug throbs hot and stinging through the bruise, so she’s quick to comply. She springs to her feet immediately. Time to go again.

She smiles at Pietro, a sad waver over her lips. “Think you can keep running, brother?”

Pietro shrugs. “I’m running now, aren’t I?”


	46. Photographing Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is photographed. He doesn't mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: blood, stomping, (an attempt at) humiliation

“I’ll have you know that I like that picture,” Loki says, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth. “And when you get it printed, I’d  _very much_ like a copy.”

“Vain thing,” the man (Midgardian, ugh) hums. He strokes a broad palm back over Loki’s tangled hair and curls his fingers against the curve of his skull. He holds his head still. 

Then he backhands Loki right over the face.

“Dunno why so vain when you look like this,” he continues. The man was wearing a ring (ruby, gold,  _tacky_ ) and the gem cut open the soft tissue of Loki’s cheek. It drips blood. “But stay put.”

He holds Loki up by the chin and snaps another picture with his phone. “See,” the man says, turning the screen to Loki. “You look like shit.”

Loki hums, appraising himself. “I don’t know. I think the black eye makes me look…roguish?”

The man stares at him, dumbfounded.

“Ah, I see you don’t understand. It means rakish. Scoundrelly? Knavish? Come now, I understand that the public school system here leaves much to be desired but–”

Loki is dropped to the floor. The blunt impact along his back knocks the wind out of him. He’s trying to catch his breath when the man lifts his foot and stomps his face.

 _Stomps his face._ The nerve! Loki is a god. A midgardian could never–

He stomps him again, then again and again until Loki’s nose crushes and his lips split on his teeth. Then he takes a picture. Another. The man stares down at his phone, frowning at the image.

“Well,” Loki croaks from the ground. “Let’s see it, then.”

The man sighs and crouches next to Loki to show him the picture. “You’re a fucking pain, you know that?”

Loki squints through the blood at his picture. In it, his lips are pulled into a grimace. No…a smile. He’s smiling. Imagine that.

“I have been told.”


	47. Target Practice - Peter with a Bow & Arrow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A mind stone controlled Clint Barton shoots Peter with arrows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: gore, broken bones, bleeding, brief discussion of animal hunting

“So, I know this isn’t your fault,” Peter sobs. “But I don’t know you very well, Mr. Barton, and I don’t like to cry in front of strangers. So, could you look away?”

Eyes lit up Mind Stone blue, Barton shakes his head. He’s already pulling another arrow from the quiver. He takes dead aim at Peter’s suspended body.

Peter is strung up by his ankles. Apparently so Barton can practice his aim. 

Slowly, Peter drags the first arrow out of his body. It’s lodged into his side, a few inches under his ribcage. He should probably leave it in to stem the bleeding, but he doesn’t want to heal over the arrow head.

As predicted, when the arrow comes out, a rush of blood follows it. Peter cries, wails actually. The arrow head snagged on his skin on the way out, it hurt a lot to yank it free.

“See,” he rasps, panting. “This is what I didn’t want you to see.”

“I like to keep an eye on things,” Barton says, notching his next arrow.

“Ohhh,” Peter says, pressing his hand to the bleeding wound. He doesn’t like the way the blood trickles up his body, dripping on the hook of his jaw. “It’s Hawk _eye_ not Hawk _guy._ See, that sounds a lot cooler than–”

Barton looses the arrow. This one strikes deep, lances all the way through Peter’s bicep and comes out the other side. He stares down at it, the arrow skewering his brachii. 

The first arrow just sunk into him a few inches. This one shot straight through.

“Holy shit, dude. What the hell?”

Barton notches and loosens yet another, directly through Peter’s left thigh. His femur splits open. His whole body swings with the impact.

Peter cries out. He can’t help himself. It’s a lot. It hurts like…like…

Like being shot with a bow and arrow.

Peter can’t bear to drag them free of his body again. It’s a miracle that last arrow missed his femoral artery. It’s a miracle that Peter is still conscious right now, stuck up with arrows as he is.

“Just picked these up from Cabela’s,” Barton says conversationally. He’s fastening a wire to the next arrow before he notches it. “Carbon with blazer vanes. 15% FOC which is tricky, but better for hunting.”

Hunting?

Barton lets the next arrow fly, straight through Peter’s stomach. He really is an accomplished marksman. It grazes and settles against Peter’s spine, but doesn’t penetrate.

“They’re for elk,” Barton clarifies. “That’s why they’re going straight through you.”

Barton fires another arrow, but not at Peter: at the rope suspending the weight of his body. The arrow cleaves through, severs the rope, and Peter crashes to the floor.

With a jolt, Peter realizes that the arrow in his gut is still connected by a wire. A wire that Barton has in his hand now. Peter is like a fish on a line.

And Barton reels him in, pulling him closer to himself. 

“Elk are extremely large creatures,” Barton continues. “Much bigger than a deer or horse.”

Peter is breathless as he’s dragged across the floor. The arrows shift inside of him, scraping along the concrete. The wire tugs him along by the arrow lanced through his intestines. 

“Thick ribs and shoulder bones. Sizable chest cavities. But you…”

Barton wraps his hand around the arrow in Peter’s leg. The one that snapped the largest bone in his body like it was toothpick.

“You’re not a large creature at all, are you? You are very…” He twists the arrow. Peter yowls. “… _Very_ small. Remember that.”

Barton yanks the arrow free.


	48. Ropes + Bath for Loki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki is scalded with burning water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: water torture, bondage, boiling, forced nudity, blisters

They dunk him. They grasp him by the ropes around his chest and dunk him into the bath. Each time they delve him under, his lungs clench and his sinuses fill with icy water.

Loki hauls in a deep breath before he hits the water. Each time he’s submerged, he’s not sure he’s coming back up.

But they quickly learn that Loki is comfortable with cold. The doctors write that down, and note that the cold water isn’t much of a hardship for him. That he’s adjusted to it.

His teeth don’t even chatter.

So, they drain the tub and pour boiling water over his bare skin. This hurts. And this hurts a lot.

His skin shocks flushed with blood. The ropes soak through with hot water and trap the heat against his skin. His back is still partially submerged by the quarter inch of water left in the basin.

Blisters raise. 

“Swelling and blistering,” notes one of the doctors. A woman. “Looks like a deep dermal burn to me. Hard to tell since he’s not human.”

“Next pot should be hotter,” her assistant notes. “Much hotter.”

“Oh joy,” Loki says. He is ignored.

They pour the next pot of water directly over Loki’s throat. He cries out until he can’t. Wherever the water directly hit, the skin turns black, then burns away.

The flow of hot water down his shoulders and chest turns the skin waxy. Almost like leather. Loki whimpers. He feels cold, a chill that wracks his body even where the burns haven’t spread. 

“Full thickness burn. All three layers scalded,” the doctor says, sounding pleased with herself. She peers down into the basin of the tub, smiling at Loki. “How are you holding up?”

The sitting boiling water now touches his elbows, singing the skin close to the bone. He most certainly needs medical attention.

Loki smiles and chokes out, “Swimmingly.”


	49. Sam and Bucky Tied Together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam and Bucky are tied together then dumped in a pool.
> 
> Requested by the absolutely flawless subverbaldreams, whom I adore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings: metal wires, forced nudity

Sam is new to HYDRA’s methodology. 

Bucky is more accustomed to it.

They are seated on stools facing each other. In the middle of a pitch dark room that smells chemical. Like chlorine.

Sam shifts against the metal wires that bind them thigh to thigh, calf to calf, forearm to forearm. (Of course HYDRA removed Bucky’s prosthetic. Sam’s right arm is twined around Bucky’s back. As if they might dance.) While Sam squirms, Bucky sits stock still. Waiting.

“So,” Sam says after a few minutes. “You think this is it?”

“I think you should prepare yourself for the worst,” Bucky advises. He can’t see Sam’s face, close as it is. But he’d guess he’s rolling his eyes.

“You suck the fun out of everything, man. You know that?”

Bucky blinks. “I suck the fun out of  _torture_?”

Sam sighs, leans back as much as the metal wires will allow him to. “Hey, you and me? We don’t get along. But being tied to you isn’t exactly torture.” He pauses. “Even if I am  _buck_  naked.”

Bucky snorts. “Yeah, never heard that one before.”

Bright fluorescent lights suddenly flood the room, and Bucky is surprised to find they’re in a much larger room than he expected. Next to a swimming pool.

Well, that explains the smell of chlorine.

“That was sweet,” Rumlow says, standing right next to them. “Weird, but sweet.”

Sam startles. Neither of them knew he was there. He jerks against the wires binding their ankles together, and one slices through skin, pulled taught across Bucky’s achilles’ tendon.

It doesn’t help when Rumlow hooks his fingers through the wires stretching between Sam and Bucky. These wires press against the cartilage between their ribs. Sam and Bucky wince in tandem, feeling mirror pain.

“There we go,” Rumlow says. “That’s better.”

“Oh my god,” Sam says, exasperation in each syllable. 

Bucky’s eyes widen. Sam is every bit the idiot hero as Steve ever was. He is going to say something stupid. He’s going to make this so much worse. He doesn’t know what Rumlow is capable of.

He’s shaking his head when Sam says, “I thought I told you to shut up.”

Rumlow pushes the heel of his palm against Sam’s shoulder. The pressure rocks their bodies towards the pool, leaning them over the side. Over the deep end.

They’re suspended by Rumlow’s two fingers, tucked under the wires.

“Did you?” Rumlow says, letting them lean out farther. “Strange what excessive burn damage does to one’s memory.”

“Memory damage? This seems like more of a personality disorder to me.”

What an idiot. Bucky closes his eyes.

Rumlow dumps them into the pool.

They sink down sideways, weighed down by the stools and each other’s bodies. The chlorine stings chemical-bright wherever the metal wire cut open skin.

Sam is thrashing, but just his right arm. Quick, upwards jerks that spill blood into the water. 

Bucky stills him. Mouths through the bubbles of his dwindling breath:  _Wait for Rumlow._

They both look up to the surface of the pool. Rumlow’s wavering outline overlooks them. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting too long; Sam will soon drown if they don’t do something soon.

Bucky’s heart clenches. Rumlow is waiting to see the bubbles stop.

Bucky is more accustomed to hypoxia and its effects than Sam. Bucky is a super soldier. He should be the one to do this:

He opens his mouth wide and loosens his throat. All the air escape from his lungs and goes hurdling towards the surface.

Rumlow’s outline hovers, then recedes. Leaving them for dead.

Sam doesn’t need prompting. He struggles in earnest now that Bucky has no air left. Twisting his right arm back and forth, yanking it up.

(It’s a good choice, his right arm. It’s the one bound to Bucky’s back. It’s the one laid flat with only two wires pinning it down. Bucky can appreciate a survivalist.)

Though it shaves off the skin of his arm, Sam gets it free. He unravels Bucky’s binds before setting to his own.

When they surface, Sam is laughing. Bright and braying until Bucky has to laugh along with him. 

“I guess you could call that a bonding experience.”


End file.
